He was in love with her and he didn’t even know it.
After dismissing her, Dino went downstairs to eat some cereal. That had showed her. He tried to imagine doing the things he’d done with Siobhan with Jackie, but it made him feel queasy and odd. A little later he looked at the clock and saw with a shock that it had somehow become one o’clock. People were supposed to come round at midday! His parents …! The house looked as if someone had thrown a party in it.
Dino’s anxiety levels began to rise alarmingly. He rushed back to the phone and rang his friends one after the other, but every one of them was too busy lying in bed to speak to him. He began running around from room to room throwing rubbish into a binbag, but in half an hour nothing seemed to have changed. Already, he was very seriously regretting having told Jackie about Siobhan, richly though she deserved it. It wasn’t until gone two that the doorbell rang. He rushed to open it; it was Deborah. She smiled beatifically at him.
‘Is Jon here yet?’ she asked.
‘Quick,’ he yelped. ‘We have to clean up!’
To his amazement, Debs didn’t seem to get the message. The first thing she did was try to ring Jon, but there was no answer from his phone and his mobile was switched off. Then she wanted to go round to wake him up, and Dino had to keep watching the front door in case she sneaked out. And the rest of them? Not one of the lying, cheating bastards had showed up. The house was a death pit of household destruction. Fag ends in the carpet, plastic cups ground underfoot in puddles of sour, stinking beer. There were all the breakables to unwrap and puddles of sick lurking in places that no one had as yet even discovered. His parents were due home in just a few hours and there was a week’s work for twenty strong men still left to do.
By the time Ben came round at three, Dino didn’t know whether to cuddle him or punch him for being so late.
‘Where the fuck were you?’ he whimpered.
‘Hangover,’ said Ben. ‘Don’t worry, we’ll get it done. Where’s Jackie?’
Half an hour later, there was another knock at the door. Both Deborah and Dino ran to open it. There stood Jackie and Sue.
‘Deborah!’ gasped Jackie. Was this who Dino had spent the night with? ‘You!’
‘Have you seen Jonathon?’ demanded Deborah. ‘What? What have I done?’ she added, seeing Jackie’s horrified face.
It took a while to sort it out. Deborah, who had just spent an hour on her own with Dino, had had enough, and left. Jackie, realising that she’d made a mistake, apologised to her and started trying to make it up with Dino, but he was too agitated about getting the house clean to realise that she was offering to sleep with him again. Shouting started. Sue was furious with herself for coming at all. Jackie had rung her at an hour of Sunday morning she didn’t previously know existed. She had a bad hangover and this was not her problem. It was all cobblers, anyway. She hadn’t believed Dino’s story about sleeping with someone else for a second.
‘There wasn’t anyone else there, what did he do, ring an escort agency?’ she’d asked when Jackie rang her on her mobile. How obvious was it that as soon as they got there, Jackie and Dino would stand and shout at each other while she’d be expected to run around and actually help with the housework?
It was a point of principle. Sue never helped with the housework.
‘OK,’ she snarled. ‘I’ll do one bedroom and then I’m going. I have homework to do.’
‘You came to the party too,’ yelled Dino. ‘You enjoyed it!’
‘It was a crap party,’ she snapped, and stamped upstairs to the big bedroom only to find that she’d forgotten about the offending vomit.
Jackie thought she was going to go hysterical. ‘We have to talk,’ she blubbed as Sue thumped upstairs.
‘We have to clean,’ insisted Dino.
‘How can I do housework when you spent the night with someone else?’ she screamed.
One brief glimpse at Jackie’s face was enough to tell Dino that if he stuck to his story, he was unlikely to get so much as a light dusting out of her. Even guilt at running out on him wasn’t going to help her to see reason. His parents were due back in a few hours. Deborah had gone, Sue was unreliable, Ben was male. What could he do?
‘I was lying,’ he lied.
‘You were lying?’
‘Yeah.’
‘You just wanted to hurt me!’
‘Jacks, you ran out on me. You promised. And you promised to help get the place together and here it is, it’s half past three and look at it, it’s a shit hole. I’m sorry I told a fib but can we please, please get this place put together. Please?’
Jackie blinked through her tears at the chaos all around them. It was, after all, her who was in the wrong. He was a lying bastard, but at least he was lying about not having slept with someone rather than the other way round.
‘OK,’ she said. ‘But after this, we have to talk. OK?’
‘I love you!’ cried Dino. He grabbed her, hugged her and kissed her. He was happy again, and the poor deluded girl smiled with pleasure. It was one of Dino’s greatest gifts; he was infectious. He broadcast his feelings. If he felt bad, so did anyone near him. If he smiled, the world smiled with him. It was all so perfect. He’d lost his virginity! He wasn’t going to chuck Jackie! She was going to help him clean! He put his arms round her and squeezed her and radiated pleasure. Jackie was swamped by it. She held her face up to him and felt his joy sparkle in her eyes and fizz and tingle in her spine and in her belly. Ben, standing at the back of the room with a binbag full of beer cans, laughed to see them. Upstairs, Sue scowled as pleasure fizzed up through her feet. She thought, Why? And Deborah, plodding on her way home trying not to cry, thought of Jonathon waking up in bed and getting anxious and confused about her, and she forgave him suddenly for no reason at all.
17
dino
It was like magic once Jacks got there. The whole place just cleaned itself. Man! Just like that. She even got Sue into it, they liked it. Sue was humming to herself as she vacuumed the landing. That’s girls for you. I can’t even work out how to keep my room clean.
As we worked, I started thinking about my position and you know … I started to think that maybe, it was a pretty good position. I mean, it could actually work out pretty well for everyone, but for me in particular. Siobhan’s all very well, but I don’t know if I fancy her as a girlfriend. You know what I mean? She’s a bit of a slapper. Not like Jackie. On the other hand, Siobhan shags and Jackie doesn’t and that shagging business – that’s something I want to do a great deal more of.
What I’m saying is – why not both of them? I could go out with Jackie and shag Siobhan. Siobhan and me, that’s not going to last, but what’s to stop me seeing her a few more times without Jackie knowing anything about it? It’s perfect. It’d take the pressure off Jacks to give out, and then when she does …
‘Wow, Dino, if only I’d known! I’d have done it months ago …’
I’ll have had loads of practice! Cool or what?
Seriously, though, it’s true I won’t be nagging her so much for sex because I’ll be getting it elsewhere … and she’ll think I’m being all sensitive and understanding! Nice, eh? Anyhow, what does she expect? She’s been mucking me around for weeks, I’m bound to go looking for it somewhere else sooner or later.
I saw everyone out of the house by half four. Sue has a car, she went to drop off all the extra binbags at the dump – that was her idea. She’s done this before. What would happen if Mum and Dad looked in the wheelie bin and found all those cups and fag ends and cans and so on, you know?
And I was on my own in a nice clean house waiting for Mum and Dad to come back.
But as soon as he was on his own, Dino’s anxiety levels began to rise again. He started to get worried that they’d done the place too much. What had Ben been thinking of, polishing the table so well? That table never got polished, and now look – it shone like an advertisement. Jackie had sponged down the curtains where someone had spill
ed some beer on them and made a big clean patch right down one side. Sue had gone out and bought some shake ’n’ vac and other smellies to cover up the old beer and fag end smell lingering around the place. Since when did the house smell like that? They’d know!
He rang Jacks on her mobile for advice but she’d turned it off, the selfish cow. Gone back to bed probably, just when he needed her. He began to deconstruct the cleaning job. He sponged down the half of the curtain that was still dirty, then he got to work on the table, trying to take off that sharp shine and get it back to its natural dullness. He rubbed his sweaty hands on it, but that just made it look like a polished table that someone had wiped their hands on, so he got a little sausage grease out of the grill pan, put it on a J-cloth and rubbed it vigorously onto the shine. That made it look duller, but greasy.
Then there was the key in the door and his mum’s voice cheerily calling out, ‘We’re home!’
In that very second Dino remembered in a blinding flash of darkness what he hadn’t thought about for two whole days. He ran halfway up the stairs before they came in, trying to escape; but where to? His mum was having an affair with some wanky bloke from her school. He’d just lost his virginity, it should have been one of the best days of his life. He had not one but two girlfriends, things ought to be just brilliant, but did he feel great? No. And why? Because of his stupid fucking mother.
His parents came chattering up the hall like a pair of children. If only his dad knew what Dino knew – that’d wipe the smile off his face. They came to a stop at the bottom of the stairs looking up at him. Dino glared back down.
‘Well, that’s a fine greeting,’ said his dad. Behind him, Dino’s mum had stopped smiling. Dino was obviously a bit of a downer as far as she was concerned.
‘Welcome home?’ she said in a little voice. Dino sneered and went upstairs. What shit! He was furious. What right had they to spoil this moment for him? Sick to death about his parents’ sex life on the very day his had just begun! It couldn’t be more awful. How selfish they were. How self-obsessed. This was HIS day, HIS moment, and instead of swaggering about feeling great he was sweating with anxiety.
He went to lie down on the bed and tried to remember what sex had been like – his hands on Siobhan’s breasts, the hot feel of her moving underneath him – but all he could think about was Dave Short doing the same things to his mum.
He heard her coming up the stairs and his heart began to beat violently in his chest. She was going to talk about it! She knew he knew! She knocked, popped her head round the door and asked, how come the table smelled of sausages?
Dino was amazed. Was that it? Was that all she could say after a whole week of unacknowledged knowing? He waved her imperiously away from his door with a hand, and – can you believe this? The bitch got cross with him for being rude. She got cross with him! Suddenly, Dino was screaming at her and then his dad came up to have a go at him for speaking to his mother like that. Get that! Both of them at the end of the bed telling him how many different kinds of shit he was and all the time he was thinking, You people have no idea. If they had the slightest inkling of what he could do just by opening his mouth and uttering the secret words. He was a time bomb. He was a fucking Cruise Missile. He could not believe he was having to put up with this shit.
While his dad was out picking up Mat and his mum was getting tea, Dino decided that the only explanation had to be that it didn’t matter. They’d obviously had a nice time away. They seemed to like one another. Why should he worry? All sorts of things could be going on. Maybe they had an open marriage. Or they’d decided that the marriage was over but they ought to stay together for the sake of the children. It could be that. They could be swingers! Well – it happened. Someone’s mum and dad had to be swingers. Maybe it just happened to be his.
‘Did you have a good time, then?’ he asked them at dinner that evening. He gave his mum a little wink. She stared blankly at him.
‘Great. Thanks for asking,’ said his dad sarcastically.
‘Just the two of you, was it?’
‘It’d be rather difficult to have a romantic weekend with more than two, wouldn’t it?’ asked Dad.
‘Dirty weekend, you mean,’ corrected Mat, but everyone ignored him. Dino smirked. He wanted to let them know that he knew what was going on. He stared at his mum until he caught her eye and gave a leering kind of look.
‘You look flushed,’ his dad said to her.
‘Yes! Must be the menopause or something, I expect!’ said his mum, fanning herself with her hand frantically. Everyone stared at her.
‘What’s that?’ asked Mat suspiciously.
‘I can’t say I’d noticed anything menopausal,’ observed his dad.
Dino lost patience. It was like some stupid game they were all playing. Ridiculous. So he just said it straight out.
‘So, did Dave Short go with you, then?’ he asked, and even as he said it he knew he shouldn’t have. His own jaw fell open with horror as the words fell out of his mouth.
His mother was still flushed from her blush; now the blood drained out of her face.
‘Dave Short? Dave Short? Dave Short?’ said his dad nervously. ‘Dave Short?’
In desperation, Dino started to laugh as if he’d made a great joke. ‘Ha, ha, ha!’ he said. He sounded like a dog coughing. ‘Oh – so you’re not swingers then,’ he said. Suddenly he desperately, desperately wanted to rescue his mum. He was trying so hard to laugh he began to choke. Then his mum started laughing as well, a hollow, amateur dramatics kind of thing … ‘He he he he he he,’ she said. Then Mat joined in, properly. Even though he had no idea what was going on he always found other people laughing funny. Perhaps it was hysteria, perhaps it was the sound of a true laugh against their own hollow impressions, but Mat started Dino and his mum laughing properly too, and that made if even funnier. Pretty soon they were all howling and wiping the tears off their faces. Only his dad sat there holding his knife and fork in his hands, staring at them all as if he was on his own in a crowd of strangers.
Later that evening, when Dino was in bed, the shouting started.
18
jonathon
‘So, let’s get this straight,’ I said. ‘Jackie threw up in your bed and then cleared off. Maybe it was some sort of hideous perversion. What do you called vomit perverts? Sickophilia? Is she a pukeophage?’
‘Yeah, yeah, yeah,’ said Dino, rolling his eyes.
‘Not exactly what you were expecting,’ said Ben.
‘I thought it was party on, knickers off. Are you sure it wasn’t a failed attempt at oral sex you don’t want to tell us about?’
‘I was upset about it,’ said Dino grimly.
‘Because if it was I don’t blame her for throwing up. The mere thought …’
‘Bloody shut up,’ hissed Dino. And there it was: the look. It’s not fair. I ought to be able to talk the pants off him but all he has to do is look at me and I just shrivel up.
‘Sorry, Deen,’ I snivelled, but it was too late: I had ceased to exist.
Ben wagged his finger at Dino and smiled fondly at him. ‘You said this was her last chance.’
Dino pulled a face.
‘You can’t force someone to do sex with you,’ I pointed out, but he ignored me.
‘So?’ Ben asked him.
‘I don’t know how much she really likes me,’ Dino complained.
‘I don’t think there’s much doubt that she’s very much smitten,’ I said. He half smiled at me. Flattery will get you everywhere with the Lozenge.
That’s what I call him. Dino the Lozenge. I can’t remember why. He must remind me of a cough sweet in some indefinable way.
‘Jon’s right,’ said Ben; and Dino looked so pleased about it, Ben and I exchanged a fond glance. Funny, isn’t it? Why on earth should we feel so happy because Dino is pleased about something?
He scowled lightly. ‘Do you think I’d be a bit of wanker to go back out with her? After all that?’
; ‘It all depends,’ said Ben. ‘How much do you like her?’ There was a pause, in which Dino looked at him as if he’d just asked what unicorn he was wearing today.
‘What do you feel for her?’ I asked.
Dino looked all confused, and then he blushed. Ah! Bless.
‘I’ve never thought about it,’ he said coyly.
Was it possible? After all the dozens of times he’d talked to us about Jackie, and he’d never actually thought about what he felt?
‘Not even once?’ I asked.
‘Well, of course I have,’ snapped Dino, through his blush. ‘But …’
‘Ah, now,’ said Ben. ‘I think old Dino likes her more than he cares to admit.’
Dino smiled shyly. He nodded. ‘It’s true,’ he said, colouring up again. ‘She’s lovely.’
Nice, isn’t he nice? As well as being a bastard, of course.
‘So you might as well keep on with her, unless you’ve got someone better to do,’ I said. Which was just a joke to cover up his embarrassment, actually, but he looked at me as if I’d said some horrible blasphemy.
‘No, of course not,’ he snarled. So there I was back in the depths of the shit heap again, without really knowing why this time. And it was at that moment, just at the height of my confusion, that I looked up and saw her standing by the lockers.
DeborAGHHHHHHHHHHH!
She was talking to Sue and Lesley. As I watched, she turned round, saw me, smiled and gave me a big wave. I looked away and pretended I hadn’t seen her – much too late. Ouch – that must have hurt! Poor Debs. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her turn away back to her friends.
‘Do you want to talk about it?’ said Ben. I looked at him. He was nodding over to Debs.
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