by Lucy Carver
At this stage – seven days into my first term at St Jude’s – Paige didn’t speak to me much anyway, not once she’d realized that I didn’t know a horse’s fetlock from its withers. She’d made it crystal clear that non-horsey people were low life, ranked alongside plankton.
‘I didn’t know I was stealing him from anyone,’ I pointed out.
‘You’re not,’ Paige cut in, expertly applying the metal polish. ‘Not from me, at least. Actually I’m going to Tom’s party with Luke. You know – Luke Pearson, son of the Formula One racing supremo and big-time property developer.’ More polish and a whole lot of rubbing. Then she attached pieces of bit to bridle, fastened buckles and slung the whole thing over her shoulder. ‘Who are you going to the party with, Lily?’ she asked pointedly as she strode out of the room.
Lily reacted as if she’d been slapped in the face.
‘You OK?’ I checked. I think now of how vulnerable she was – up one minute and down, down, down the next – the type of car-crash personality you quickly learn to look out for. I remember the startled hurt in her eyes and how I wanted to smooth it away and make everything all right.
She nodded then pasted on a fake smile.
‘So you’ll be going to the party with your special guy – the one you mentioned the first time we talked?’
Lily shook her head. ‘No. Actually, Paige was referring to the fact that my beloved boyfriend just dumped me,’ she confessed quietly. ‘Anyway, I guess I deserve whatever she throws my way.’ Then she was up off the bed and playing loud music, preparing her brushes, squeezing paint, mixing colours while I found Jack C on Facebook.
‘What exactly are you looking for?’ Lily asked, leaving her canvas to glance over my shoulder and managing to dribble red acrylic on to my white top. ‘Do you want to know how many girls he’s slept with? Whether his current status is single, and, if so, how the hell that happened, even for a nanosecond?’
‘Why he even asked me to the party in the first place,’ I added, rubbing at the paint with my fingertips and making even more of a mess, plus revealing to Lily the fact that in the sphere of boys and relationships my self-confidence is zero.
Her jaw dropped again and more paint dribbled. ‘You’re not serious?’
‘Yes, I’m serious.’
With her free hand, Lily marched me to a mirror and made me stare into it. ‘That’s why,’ she told me with her wide, beautiful grin.
chapter two
Jack got two late passes from the bursar’s office and we went to Tom’s party in Chartsey Bottom. I kid you not and don’t laugh because it’s childish and not cool – this is the name of an actual village.
You can’t quite see the Bottoms, as locals call it, from St Jude’s – there are acres of lawn, the lake and an ancient oak forest in the way. Then a small, fast-running river with an old water mill perched on its bank, a few farmers’ fields and finally you come to a row of limestone cottages forming one main street with a tea shop called the Squinting Cat (I don’t know, don’t ask), a specialist greengrocer’s selling organic veg, a florist’s, the Church of St Michael’s and All Angels, and the Bridge Inn. Behind the village is a gentle swell of green hills, then more woodland, then Upper Chartsey, even smaller than the Bottoms.
It’s all chocolate-boxy beautiful and you have to be brain dead to want to live there. This is how Tom explained it to me when I first met him at his party the following Saturday.
Tom, by the way, is tall and bony with corn-stubbly fair hair.
‘So how come you know Jack and the other St Jude’s students?’
‘We play them at five-a-side soccer,’ he told me.
‘And how come you ended up living here?’ I asked, one eye on Jack who was talking to a boy who’d barged in between us and hauled Jack off into a corner to discuss something important.
‘Ask my parents,’ Tom grumbled. ‘Except you can’t because they’re in Islington visiting my grandparents, which is where we used to live until Mum made us move out and buy this house in la-la land.’
‘I take it you don’t like it?’ I stated the obvious to keep Tom talking so that I could leave spare brain capacity to try and guess what was so urgent between Jack and barge-boy.
‘What’s to like? You see one field, you’ve seen them all. The same goes for cows and sheep – four legs and rancid smell, end of.’
‘I guess.’ There was a small pause then curiosity won out. I said, ‘Who’s that talking to Jack?’
‘What? Oh, that’s Jayden. He goes to my school. He and his mates crashed the party.’
I had to admit that Jayden did look like a gate-crasher, even though I hate to stereotype. He had a lean, prowling look, hunched forward and peering out from under his projecting brow with grey eyes that darted everywhere and didn’t rest on the person he was talking to. Feral is the word that comes to mind, like a tomcat or a big, bruising male fox.
‘Will you throw them out?’ I asked Tom, who seemed not to care that every lowlife kid in the Bottoms might now follow Jayden’s lead. I did a quick head count, picking out Paige and Luke, Harry, Zara, Lily and Jack among the dozen or so invitees from St Jude’s.
Out of uniform, the girls looked stunning – Paige not the least bit horsey in sky-high heels and a red dress with peplum waist, Zara the Hollywood babe in slinky, side-boob-flashing halter-neck and Lily doing her tousled rock-chick thing. But there were about the same number of guests who I didn’t recognize and didn’t feel so comfortable with – Tom’s friends from Ainslee Comp, ten miles down the main road towards Gloucester.
This is a lot of people and place names to throw into the mix all at once. I felt that myself at the time – kind of overwhelmed by new faces and, feebly, ashamedly wishing that Jack would break away from wild-boy Jayden and come back to me.
Great-great-aunt Caroline the code-breaker and my great-great-grandmother the suffragette must have been spinning in their graves.
‘So why do you call this la-la land?’ I asked, wrenching my attention away from Jack and Jayden.
But Lily broke up our conversation before Tom had time to answer.
‘There you are!’ she cried, sliding an arm round his waist and standing on tiptoe for a full-on lip kiss. Her eyes were staring, her pupils dilated. ‘It’s ages since I saw you – at least ten whole minutes. Tell me you missed me.’
Tom looked embarrassed. Lily surged on, swishing her hair back from her face and swamping him with another octopus embrace.
‘Cool party,’ she sighed, batting her eyelashes before kissing him again. ‘You play the best music. C’mon, let’s dance.’
He wrestled himself free and kind of thrust Lily into my arms. ‘Don’t give her any more of anything,’ he warned. ‘I don’t know what she’s had, but she definitely can’t take any more of whatever it is.’
Out came Lily’s bottom lip. ‘Awww!’
‘I mean it,’ Tom insisted, walking off.
‘He’s right,’ I tried to tell her. Her off-the-shoulder sequinned top was sliding dangerously low down her left boob, threatening a serious wardrobe malfunction, and her long hair hung lank over one mascara-smudged eye.
‘Party pooper,’ she muttered, hitching the top straight and falling off balance at the same time. Giggling, she clutched at me for support. ‘Hey, Jayden!’ she cried, spying Tom’s gate-crasher. She tottered across to join him and Jack, except that Paige and Luke got in her way just as her thin legs did that wobbly-spaghetti thing and she finally collapsed in a heap in the middle of the dance floor.
Next thing I knew, Luke had pulled her on to her feet, Paige was dragging her to the downstairs cloakroom and Jack was at my side.
‘Does Lily do this a lot?’ I wanted to know. I hadn’t drunk enough myself to just shrug it off and carry on partying with the best-looking guy in the room.
‘Lily has a few issues,’ was all Jack would say. He seemed to be on guard after his conversation with Jayden and only relaxed after he saw him leaving through the French win
dows of the grand eighteenth-century house. Exit gatecrasher with two of his Uppers’ mates.
‘Glad you came?’ Jack asked me when the drama was over.
I nodded, scared that if I attempted actual sounds I would re-create the slobbery-dog effect.
Boldly he put his arm round my waist and sidled me up against the wall. ‘Glad you came with me?’
Willingly cornered, I told him yes – a whole, recognizable word.
‘Me too. This is cool.’
Loud music, dim lights, a crush of people and the warmth of Jack’s hunky body next to mine – this definitely qualified as cool. Concentrating on the hunky bod, I smiled at him then sighed.
‘Do you like this track?’ Jack asked when a new album started.
The lights were low, the music slow and smooth. I nodded.
It was a girl singer belting out a number about being in love for the first time. The song was her Number 1 hit – ‘You’re the One for Me’ – about the precise moment when you know in your heart that your life has changed forever. Sober, I pour scorn on stuff like this. After two glasses of Sauvignon and staring into Jack’s beautiful golden-brown eyes, it was a different story.
‘Dance?’ he asked.
‘Love is a window that opens up your heart,’ she sang. ‘I hear you tell me that we’ll never part.’
‘Typical Lily.’ Paige shrugged when I tried to quiz her about our roommate’s alcohol-assisted meltdown. I’d finished slow dancing with Jack, and Paige and I had joined the queue for Tom’s upstairs bathroom.
‘It wasn’t anything we said or did?’ I needed to be sure I hadn’t offended my hyper-sensitive roommate – easy to do by accident with someone whose skin is paper-thin.
‘What? Oh no. I love Lily to bits but she’s hard work sometimes.’ Paige informed me that Harry was at that very minute making sure that Lily got back home to St Jude’s in one piece. ‘Talking of Jack . . .’
‘Were we?’
‘Yeah. Well, we are now. Have you two – you know?’ Nudge, nudge.
Paige’s question shocked romantic little me. In fact, it straight away made me think of bloodlines and thoroughbred stallions. ‘Hey, slow down, this is our first date, remember.’
‘So? We’re talking about a six-bedroomed house here.’
I made a face as if I’d tasted something nasty. I didn’t want to discuss my oh-so-limited sexual experience – not there, not then, not any time.
Paige came over all innocent. ‘What? You’re telling me you wouldn’t if he asked you?’
Luckily the bathroom door opened and Luke emerged, cool as a cucumber. Cool as in looks – tall, lean, designer-label boy – and cool as in manner. He told Paige in an offhand way that he, Jack Hooper and Zara were moving on from Tom’s party to another in Upper Chartsey.
‘Can I come?’
‘It depends. We’re leaving right now.’
‘I’m ready.’ Abandoning her place in the queue, she winked at me again and wished me luck, the way she did when she was speaking to a fellow three-day eventer – hearty and insincere at the same time. The last I saw of her as I glanced from the landing down to the hallway below, she was draped around Luke as he, Zara and the other Jack exited through the front door.
My Jack – I call him that just to keep things clear – was waiting for me downstairs in the room with the French windows. He could see I wasn’t totally into Tom’s party and all the new faces, writhing bodies and drunkenness happening around me.
‘You want to leave?’ he suggested.
Which is how I found myself walking through an oak forest at 12.30 a.m. with the hottest boy on the planet.
‘What’s that?’ I squeaked when something whoo-whooed above our heads.
‘Owl. Watch where you put your feet.’ Jack pointed to a big root jutting out across our path, then he took my hand to help me jump across a tiny stream.
‘Where are the street lamps?’ I quipped. Give me pavements and green-man crossings any day of the week. Except tonight I found I was enjoying the mulchy silence as Jack and I walked hand in hand.
I smiled to myself. Aunt Olivia had sent me to St Jude’s to learn literature and languages, history and biology, little thinking that learning in more fascinating, non-academic areas might also occur.
‘Why the smile?’ he asked.
‘Oh, nothing.’
He slowed down until we almost came to a halt, leaned against me and whispered, ‘Yeah – something.’
‘Nothing. I’m just happy, that’s all.’
‘Then I’ll tell you something,’ he said, under the gnarled branches with glimpses of moonlight overhead. ‘You were easily the most beautiful girl at the party.’
‘No way,’ I contradicted, just that tad too fast. It’s my usual saddo way of batting back compliments and I think it stopped him from doing what he’d been about to do, which was to kiss me.
‘For sure,’ he insisted. ‘Harry and Tom thought so too because they told me so. You weren’t comfortable, though, and I’m wondering why not.’
‘I guess I was worried about Lily.’
‘She was hyper,’ he agreed. ‘Totally into showing us she didn’t care that Jayden dumped her.’
‘Jayden?’ This was the first I’d heard about Lily and the foxy, feral gate-crasher, obviously.
‘Just after term started. She told everybody he did it by text. Major drama. You two room together so I’m surprised you didn’t know about it.’
‘She mentioned her boyfriend ditched her, but she didn’t say who it was. Anyway, the text thing – not nice!’ Maybe the rejection explained why Lily’s moods typically plunged far down to a place where nobody could seem to reach her. ‘Is that what you two were talking about, back at the party?’
Jack shrugged as we emerged from the forest and caught our first view of St Jude’s. ‘And other stuff.’ Feeling in his back pocket, he faked surprise.
‘What’s wrong?’ I asked.
‘The late passes – I lost them.’
‘You didn’t!’
‘I did. No, I didn’t.’ He was laughing, shaking his head, enjoying the look on my face. ‘Actually, I never had them.’
‘Really?’
‘Really. I would have got a straight no from D’Arblay.’
‘The bursar? Why would he do that?’
‘I was grounded at the end of last term. D’Arblay’s an elephant – he never forgets.’
A bit like me, then.
‘I don’t believe you did that!’ I wailed. I didn’t want to be in this much trouble within two weeks of starting at my new school.
‘Believe it,’ he laughed, running across the field, dragging me with him. ‘There’s a way to get back in without being seen, but we need to climb the wall behind the stables. Are you up for it?’
I was going to do the girly ‘not in this dress’ thing, but then I thought, Sod it, why not?
I ran ahead until we came to the wall.
‘You first, he said.
‘Stop laughing. This isn’t funny.’
‘OK, me first,’ he decided. His athletic vault on to the top of the high wall scored a perfect ten with this judge, I can tell you. Then he leaned down to offer me his hand.
‘I can do it,’ I insisted. My legs were almost as long as his, and I was no slouch in the gymnastics department either. So I hitched my floaty skirt over one shoulder and joined him on top of the wall.
Hand in hand we jumped.
My skirt billowed around me, and my hair fell forward across my cheek.
We landed in the stable yard. Jack pushed my hair from my face.
We were so close that his features turned blurry and I could feel his breath. Too close, too fast, too soon. I pulled away.
‘Sorry,’ he mumbled.
What was wrong with me? I liked – I loved the feel of his fingers pushing my hair from my face and the nearness of his lips. So why was I giving him the opposite signals?
‘No, it’s me – I’m sorry.’
Shall we go back to the dorms – him to the boys’, me to the girls’ – and turn the lights out on what had been the best evening of my entire life?
‘Not yet,’ I whispered with my heart in my mouth.
It was enough – I may have given off mixed signals, but this was the trigger – I didn’t need to say anything else to make Jack smile, lean in again and kiss me.
Yes, he kissed me.
Mistral, Paige’s grey horse, poked his head over a stable door and snickered.
I kissed Jack Cavendish back. Sweet, sweet moment that I’ll always treasure.
The memory kept me awake Saturday night and lasted all through Sunday.
‘So?’ The minute she woke up the morning after the party Paige demanded the down-and-dirty, horsey details.
‘So nothing.’ Love is a window that opens up your heart, I thought. My life had changed forever, but I didn’t feel ready to share with Paige.
‘Alyssa, you cannot be serious!’ she squealed. ‘You don’t go to Tom’s party with Jack Cavendish then go coy on us. It’s against the rules.’
‘Whose rules?’
‘Mine. C’mon, c’mon – give!’
‘OK, so we walked back together.’
‘You walked . . . !’
‘. . . Together. We talked.’
‘Talked!’
‘Don’t snort. It makes you sound like a horse. Yeah, “talked”.’
‘And?’
‘OK, then – we kissed.’
‘Better! Ooh, Alyssa, you kissed Jack Cavendish – for how long?’
‘I didn’t look at my watch.’ You know you don’t count the minutes in this situation. ‘Let’s just say we were the last ones back from Tom’s party.’ All the lights were out in the dorm corridors and when I crept back into the room I shared with Paige and Lily, sleep was the last thing on my mind.
Luckily a still-miserable Lily interrupted Paige’s inquisition. Speaking from under her duvet, she was hungover, deep down in the mire: ‘Who did Jayden end up with?’
‘I have no idea,’ Paige lied. She’d gone on with Luke and Zara to the party in Upper Chartsey (Uppers as opposed to Bottoms, mostly down to the drugs available at parties held there, I was told) and she must have been clued in to our feral friend’s every midnight move.