There, on the pillow next to Josh’s sandy head, was Freezer’s white one. He was fast asleep, too.
It was almost ten when I woke up the next morning and, in spite of a mild hangover, I felt fantastic. The night before, to help calm Adam down, I’d insisted we go out for some food and a few drinks, and we’d found a street food market a couple of roads away in a cavernous space that used to be a deeply dodgy nightclub before the council shut it down.
Once Adam had finished chuntering about people who stole other people’s cats – which was entirely unreasonable, given that Freezer wasn’t, and never had been, his – and got over his anxiety about food hygiene after I’d pointed out the Scores on the Doors five-star rating, we’d had a great time. When we got home, Josh’s bedroom door was closed, although the shower tray was damp so at least he wasn’t dead. I hadn’t been so bothered any more about taking my make-up off and walking back to my room in my pants, and I’d fallen into bed and slept for ten solid hours.
Now, though, I’d have to get up and deal with the reality of my new housemate. Also, I needed a glass of water and a wee. So I put on a dressing gown and went to the bathroom, hovering outside for a bit to see if I could identify who was home and where they were. But the house was entirely silent – Adam and Josh were either still asleep or out. Or, in Adam’s case, immersed in the world that existed behind his bedroom door and, beyond that, behind his computer screens, which I sometimes thought was his real home.
I showered and dressed, not bothering to dry my hair, and went downstairs, through the still-silent house. The early spring warmth hadn’t broken, and the sky outside was a clear, radiant blue. I even opened the back door to let in the air, which in my head smelled of flowers even though I knew it smelled of London and traffic and a bit of the foxes Hannah had said had made a den down the end of their garden.
I made a cup of coffee and drank it sitting at the table in the kitchen, warm in my leggings and jumper even though the morning was still cool. Suddenly hungry, in spite of all the smoky aubergine dip and grilled lamb I’d eaten last night, I opened the fridge. It was depressingly empty, apart from the bottle of gin I’d seen amid Josh’s stuff, some bags of wilting salad leaves and a carton of fat-free cottage cheese I’d bought. I know this makes me sound like a freak, but I genuinely do like the stuff. I didn’t fancy it, though – I felt like a proper breakfast.
Not avocado on toast and poached eggs. A Proper Fucking Breakfast.
I was hovering by the fridge, considering what exactly I felt like eating and where I might go to get it, when the front door crashed open and Josh blew in like a tsunami. The size of his sneakers had given me a clue to how tall he was, but it hadn’t prepared me for the reality. He was about six foot four, all loose, gangly limbs, floppy hair and perfect teeth. His shoulders filled the doorway and his voice filled the entire house, so it felt like there wasn’t room in the place for the two of us, never mind Adam and a part-time cat as well.
‘Hey, Tansy!’ He gambolled over and enveloped me in a hug, even though, judging from his long-sleeved Lycra top, shorts and trainers, he’d just been out for a run. Yep, definitely a run, I thought, feeling the damp fabric against my cheek. ‘I’m so sorry about the state I left the place in yesterday! I’m mortified. I got in and I’d just started to unpack when in strolls this adorable white cat, and I sat on the bed to give him some fuss and the next thing I knew it was five in the morning and I’d been crashed out for, like, ever.’
Disarmed, I said, ‘That’s okay. Been out for a run?’
‘You bet! It’s glorious out there. I was expecting it to be freezing and drizzling, but it’s not. And your local park is dead cool, there are swans and everything.’
‘Coffee?’ I gestured towards the machine.
‘Not right now, thanks – I made myself one earlier. I’m going to grab a shower, and then head out and explore London. But first I’ll need some breakfast – I’m starving. Where’s good around here? And will you join me? My shout.’
I hesitated.
‘Come on,’ he urged. ‘A proper English fry-up.’
It was like he’d read my mind. My mouth watered at the prospect, despite my reluctance to spend any more time in his company than I absolutely had to. But he was my new housemate – it was the least I could do to be polite. And besides, at the back of my mind, the glimmering of an idea had appeared. ‘Go on, then.’
I didn’t bother putting on any make-up – not for Josh Valentine, of all people – but while he was in the shower I quickly dried my hair. By the time he came downstairs, dressed in faded jeans, a dark blue jumper and those giant trainers, I was as ready as I needed to be.
‘So, where’s your go-to for breakfast?’ he asked as we stepped out into the street.
It was colder than it looked – although the sun was shining, there was a brisk breeze that ruffled my hair, and I saw Josh shiver.
‘I guess it’s still really hot in Sydney,’ I said.
‘Sure is. Hard to believe I was surfing last weekend. Still, I expect I’ll toughen up.’
‘We’ll go to the Daily Grind. It’s just up the road, and they do killer breakfasts there. If there’s space for us, that is.’
But it was almost eleven o’clock; the breakfast rush was over and the bottomless brunch crowd hadn’t yet arrived, so we were able to get a table right by the window, with sunlight spilling onto its burnished copper top.
‘Morning, Tansy,’ Yelena said, putting menus and a carafe of water in front of us. I noticed her looking intently at Josh, and I knew exactly what she must be thinking. Someone got lucky last night. Of course, with Josh sitting right there, I couldn’t explain that I wouldn’t sleep with Josh if we were the last two people left on the planet and humanity’s only hope of saving itself from extinction.
‘This is Josh,’ I said. ‘He’s staying with us for a few months, while Charlotte’s travelling. So I guess you’ll be seeing quite a bit of him.’
‘You certainly will,’ Josh added, ‘if the food here is as good as it smells. I’d like a flat white, please.’
‘A double espresso for me, please,’ I requested automatically.
‘And are you ready to order food?’ Yelena asked. ‘Or shall I give you five minutes?’
‘I’m ready,’ Josh said. ‘I’d like the full English, with scrambled eggs and extra hash browns and wholemeal sourdough toast.’
I looked down at the menu. Suddenly, the type went all strange in front of my eyes, blurring and jumping, and I wasn’t in the Daily Grind any more but in the canteen at school, sitting all alone, opening my lunchbox as quietly as I could, but knowing that there was no way I wouldn’t be noticed; no way I’d be ignored. Then, I’d tried my hardest not to look at Josh. Now he was sitting right there opposite me and I had no choice.
How can you look so bloody relaxed? I wondered. How can you smile, like this is totally normal?
Yelena was still standing there, I realised, patiently holding her pencil at the ready over her order pad.
‘Uh… I’ll have the same as him, please.’ At least it meant I didn’t have to gather my thoughts enough to make an actual decision.
‘So,’ Josh said when she’d gone, ‘looks like you come here often.’
The cheesy line made me blush, and at the same time feel absolutely furious. How could he – how dare he – provoke that reaction in me? He wasn’t Renzo, and it was Renzo I wanted. The two of them couldn’t have been more different: even though Josh was fit, in a kind of loose-limbed, lanky, surfer sort of way, he had none of the magnetic power that Renzo had. If Renzo was a black panther, sleek and self-possessed, Josh was a grinning, playful golden retriever.
‘Oftenish,’ I replied, hoping that he hadn’t noticed the blush. ‘It’s just up the road, after all, and our neighbour, Luke, whose cat you met, owns the place.’
So after that, our conversation moved along neutral lines. Josh asked about the area, and about my work, and I asked how Debbie was doing, and about
his plans for exploring London. As we ate our breakfast, I found myself relaxing a bit. Maybe I could put the past behind me – be a grown-up, be friendly and polite and do the right thing for Debbie until it was time for him to move out, for Charlotte to return and for everything to go back to normal.
Then, out of nowhere, Josh asked, ‘So, are you seeing anyone right now? I mean, sorry if it’s a personal question.’
‘Not at all,’ I said stiffly. ‘I was, but we broke up just before Christmas.’
‘Rubbish timing,’ he sympathised. ‘Me too, as it happens. Paige and I were together for three years, but I guess it just got to the point where we wanted different things. She was keen to settle down and stuff, and I just wasn’t ready. I wanted to see some more of the world first. So here I am.’
‘Here you are,’ I echoed. And, looking at his white, even teeth and his smiling eyes, the deep greeny-blue of seawater, the ghost of an idea I’d had earlier resurfaced. He could be useful. It wasn’t kind; it wasn’t particularly fair, but I didn’t have to care about that. It wasn’t like he’d treated me fairly. I had a goal: I was going to get Renzo back. And if Josh could unwittingly help me with that, and there was some collateral damage, so be it. He deserved it.
Year Ten
I’d thought things at school were bad before, but I’d had no idea – no idea at all.
It started the very next day, when I walked into the classroom and saw Kylie, Anoushka and their friends all whispering together by their desks. When they saw me, the room immediately went quiet, and they stared at me. Then Anoushka whispered something to Danielle, one of the girls on the periphery of the group, and they all giggled.
‘Slag,’ I heard Kylie not-quite-whisper.
‘Slapper,’ Anoushka hissed. She wasn’t even bothering to pretend she didn’t want me to hear. ‘Bag of chips and a Mars bar and she’s anyone’s. Or so they say.’
‘She goes like a train, I’m told,’ Kylie said, turning to the group of boys behind her – Ben, Josh, Luke and a few others. ‘You should all have a go. So long as you don’t mind Connor’s sloppy seconds.’
There was more laughter. One of the boys said, ‘Gross.’ Another said, ‘Yeah, but I still would.’ ‘Any hole’s a goal,’ laughed another.
Then, just as I was wondering whether it was physically possible to simply drop dead, or whether I could run away and hide under my duvet and never come out again, Mr Brodrick showed up and told us all to get into our seats and quieten down before he started doling out detentions.
After that, everyone started calling me Bike Barlow, even in front of the teachers. I wasn’t part of the invisible majority any more; I was firmly in with the untouchables. However hard I tried to keep my head down and go back to being invisible, they sought me out. At lunchtime later that week, when I brought tuna sandwiches in for lunch, Anoushka said, ‘Something stinks in here. Must be Bike Barlow’s fanny,’ and immediately I stopped feeling hungry.
At home that night, I told Mum I didn’t want any dinner, and went to the room Perdita and I shared. I couldn’t tell my little sister what was happening; she was still in junior school, safely untainted by my reputation, and I didn’t want to worry her. Besides, I felt too ashamed to admit what had happened to anyone who loved me.
I took off my clothes and forced myself to look in the mirror. My face was a blank, white moon broken only by my wide, frightened eyes and the tight line of my mouth. My hair was still scraped back in a ponytail. My breasts looked huge, obscene and incongruous like lumps of uncooked dough on my chest.
I remembered a thing I’d read somewhere – in a magazine, or maybe in one of the books about ‘grooming’ and ‘deportment’ that seemed to have been gathering dust on the shelves of our school library since the 1980s.
Stand tall. Glance down. If you can see your belly button, you need tummy-toning.
I could see my belly button all right. I gripped the flesh of my abdomen and squeezed hard. On a toned body, you can never pinch more than an inch. Another fail.
I pulled on a T-shirt that used to be baggy on me, but was tight now and barely covered my bottom, and padded through to the bathroom.
I stepped gingerly on the scales and watched the black digital numbers flicker and settle. Ten stone eight pounds. Well, there might not be much else I could change, but I could change that.
The next day, I told Mum I’d make my own lunch from now on. I peeled a carrot, cut it up into sticks and shoved it into one of the bags Mum used for our sandwiches, together with an apple. And at school, I locked myself into a toilet cubicle and ate there, surrounded by the smells of industrial bleach and Impulse body spray.
It was surprisingly easy to hide what I was doing from Mum. It helped that her radar was so finely tuned to Dad: where he was going while she was at work, where the money was draining away to, how to keep changing the password on the computer and hiding her chequebook. She was constantly stressed, distracted and exhausted, and when she asked me how things were at school, it was easy to just say, ‘Fine,’ and watch the concern on her face turn to relief and then concern again as the next worry jumped into her mind. When she said, ‘You’ll turn into a horse, love, eating like that,’ I hissed that raw fruit and vegetables were good for you, everyone knew that, and if she carried on nagging me about what I ate I’d get a complex and it would be all her fault.
I was not the nicest teenager there’s ever been, it has to be said. After the long, lonely summer holidays had dragged past, I walked into the classroom, filled with dread about what the new term had in store for me. But things felt different.
Kylie said, ‘Hi, Tansy,’ as casually as if she said it every day.
Anoushka said, ‘I like your hair like that. Cool.’
Astonished, I muttered a thank you and sat down, confused but also secretly delighted. Maybe it was okay. Maybe they’d forgiven me – as I’d longed for them to, even though, if I allowed myself to think hard enough about it, I knew I’d done nothing wrong.
Then, at break time, Danielle approached me.
‘Tansy?’ Her tone was shy, almost wheedling.
I looked up from the copy of Glamour magazine someone had left in the canteen. I’d have told her to get lost, if I’d been one of the cool kids. But I wasn’t, so I couldn’t.
‘Hi, Danielle.’
‘Listen, Kylie and Anoushka asked me to come and talk to you. They reckon they couldn’t, cos you’d tell them to eff off. But they’re sorry they’ve been bitchy to you. Anoushka was, like, literally crying earlier, she feels so bad.’
She wasn’t the only one who’d felt so bad she’d literally cried recently, I thought. But I said, ‘Oh, really?’
‘Tansy, look, I know they’ve been cows to you. Me too, if I’m honest. And I’m sorry as well. We all really want to make it up to you.’
Every bit of me was on high alert. I knew deep down – I was quite certain – that I shouldn’t, mustn’t trust her. Danielle, of all people, who the inner circle used to do their dirty work. But at the same time, she looked genuinely remorseful. I knew her parents were getting divorced and she was going through a tough time. She was right – if it had been one of the ringleaders, I might well have told them where to go. But for Danielle, with her acne and her bitten nails, and her way of pressing her elbows into her sides all the time so no one could see the damp patches her nervous sweat left on her school shirt, I felt genuine pity.
‘That’s nice,’ I said cautiously.
‘Look, they’ve asked you – we’ve asked you – if you want to come to the cinema with us on Saturday. We’re going to see The Dark Knight, you know, the new Batman movie? And afterwards we’re going to McDonald’s, and we might try and get into the Moon and Cow. I know, like, fat chance, but Luke’s sister’s a barmaid there and he reckons we might. What d’you think?’
I’d passed Kylie and Anoushka in the street on Saturday evenings before, and even to me they looked eighteen if they looked a day. Danielle? Not so much. But I didn�
�t say that. My defences were down, but I was still on a hair-trigger of awareness that I was being played.
‘Depends whether the manager also turns a blind eye, I guess. But it sounds like a fun night. I hope you guys enjoy.’
‘No, but, Tansy,’ Danielle persisted, ‘we really want you to come. Kylie said she wants to make things right between us all.’
‘I want to make things right, too,’ I admitted.
‘So you’ll come then?’
‘I don’t think so. I’m kind of busy.’ Yeah, I was. Staring at the four walls of my room and doing ab crunches.
Danielle looked crestfallen, almost panicky. ‘Please, Tansy? Please will you come?’ She leaned in close to me, so close I could smell the fruity mousse she’d used on her hair. ‘You see, it’s not just them. I promised I wouldn’t tell you, but it’s Josh. He says he’ll only come if you do. Look.’
She fished her phone out of her blazer pocket, pressed a few buttons and showed me the screen. On it was a text.
Can’t be arsed with Batman if I’m honest. But if you ask Tansy Barlow I might change my mind. She’s well fit.
I gazed at the screen for a second, overwhelmed by what I read – but not so overwhelmed that I didn’t commit the number instantly to memory, to store away like a precious gift.
In spite of the rush of elation and amazement I felt, I could see what was going on. Kind of. If Josh liked me – my God, Josh Valentine, liking me – and had imposed my presence as a condition of turning up to see a movie and eat burgers with Kylie and her crowd, they’d have invited their mums along if that was what it took to get him. Josh – too cool even for the cool crowd – was a serious prize. Except he didn’t like me. There was no way he did. Was there?
‘If Josh wants to hang out with me, why doesn’t he ask me himself?’
Danielle visibly relaxed. ‘Search me. I guess he’s shy. And he said you’re, like, a total ice maiden when he sees you when you work at the shop on Saturdays. Maybe he thinks that in, like, a group, it would be different.’
It's Not You It's Him: An absolutely hilarious and feel-good romantic comedy Page 13
