by Hayley Long
Finally, once I’d calmed down a bit, I said, ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
Ruthie pulled a face which was half a smile and half a look of total bafflement. ‘Tell you what?’ she asked.
I sniffed and took a deep breath. And then I blurted out, ‘TELL ME THAT YOU WERE ILL!’
Ruthie stopped smiling and just looked baffled. ‘But I’m not,’ she said.
I sniffed again. Now it was my turn to be baffled. ‘But you must be,’ I said.
‘But I’m not,’ said Ruthie.
I shook my head. I was starting to get a bit cross with her. ‘Don’t lie to me, Ruthie. I know you are. Really seriously ill.’
Ruthie looked upset. She took hold of my hands again and said, ‘Lottie, sweetheart, listen to me. I’M NOT ILL. NOT AT ALL. THERE IS NOTHING WHATSOEVER WRONG WITH ME.’ And then, very gently and very softly, she said, ‘But are you OK?’
‘Yep . . .’ I said. And then, ‘No.’ And then I shook my head, all confused, and said, ‘This isn’t about me, it’s about you!’
‘Yes, and I just told you, I’m fine,’ said Ruthie.
‘THEN WHY HAVE YOU GOT ALL THIS MEDICATION IN YOUR MAKE-UP BAG?’ I nearly shouted it and, at the same time, I emptied her make-up bag all over the floor.
Ruthie looked at the tablets which were now by her feet. And then she shut her eyes for a second and sighed. When she opened them again, she said, ‘Bloody hell, Lottie! Sometimes you can be so naive!’
‘Huh?’ I said.
‘Have you been snooping through my stuff?’
‘No,’ I said, nearly crying again. ‘I just wanted to use some eye-make up remover and I thought that yours might be more expensive than mine.’
Ruthie sighed again. And then she knelt down on the floor of the bathroom and picked up a strip of tablets. ‘Come here,’ she said and pulled me down next to her. Slipping one arm around my waist she said, ‘These aren’t tablets to stop me from dying or anything. It’s the Pill.’
It took a few seconds for her words to sink in. My first reaction was one of relief. Even though Ruthie can be annoying, I really wouldn’t want her to get horrifically ill. My second reaction was complete and utter mortification.
‘Umm, you do know what the contraceptive pill is, don’t you?’ she asked.
‘Yes,’ I snapped, suddenly shifting into my third reaction – which was total outrage. If I’m honest, I was more outraged with myself for being so stupid than I actually was with Ruthie for having a sex life but it was far easier to direct my anger at her. ‘So you’re doing it with Michel then?’ I hissed. ‘And have you been going out with him very long? Do you even know anything much about him? Is this a wise relationship decision, do you think?’
Ruthie gasped in amazement and raised her eyebrows. ‘Steady on, Lottie! You’re being a bit extreme, aren’t you? It’s not actually any of your business what I do.’ And then she pouted and added, ‘And I am twenty years old, thank you very much, and I haven’t entered into all this lightly.’ She waved the strip of pills in my face. ‘I am taking the necessary precautions.’
I felt my face go very hot. I was furious. Absolutely. Seething. Furious. But only with myself. Because while Ruthie was saying all of this, it occurred to me that despite the fact that I’ve been unable to think about anything except sex recently, I’d never once thought about the consequences. Which, annoyingly, means that Ruthie is right. I am naive.
In a very disapproving voice, I said, ‘Does Mum know?
Ruthie shrugged her shoulders. ‘Get real, Lottie. I’m an adult. I don’t have to discuss everything with her.’
I bit my thumbnail and thought about this for a moment and then before I could do anything to stop it from happening, I heard a voice ask, ‘What’s it like?’ And, to my absolute and utter horror, it was my voice.
Ruthie, who I think was still a bit annoyed with me, said, ‘What?’
I bit my thumbnail again. Common sense was screaming at me to drop the subject, but I couldn’t. I said, ‘What does it feel like . . .’ I paused, a bit embarrassed, and then whispered, ‘. . . when you’re doing it?’
I may as well have asked Ruthie who the prime minister of Luxembourg is. She looked at me in total and utter bewilderment and then, finally, gave a shocked little laugh and said, ‘This conversation is TOO WEIRD. Forget it.’
She stood up to go. Panicking, I said, ‘I’m not a perv or anything. I’m just curious, that’s all!’
Ruthie hesitated and then she said, ‘Lottie, you’ll find out one day. And when you do, you won’t want to go through all the details with me, I can promise you that.’
‘I’d tell you anything,’ I said.
Ruthie smiled at me. This time there was no bafflement or amazement or concern in her smile, it was just a really warm and special smile that made me remember why I love her. It also brought me a micro-fraction closer to understanding why Michel might love her too. ‘I don’t think so,’ Ruthie said. ‘Not everything. There are some things which will always be between you and whoever it is that you fall in love with. But honestly, Lottie, there’s loads of time for all of that. Don’t be in a rush for it to happen. If you hurry, you might spoil it.’
And then she gave me another lovely smile and made a move to leave. At the door, she paused and said, ‘Can we not tell Mum about any of this?’
I gave her a little smile back. ‘Let’s pretend this conversation didn’t happen,’ I said.
Ruthie looked grateful. ‘Come on, let’s go downstairs.’
And I did, and Michel was still droning on and on about France and my mum was still looking about as bored as the most bored person in the whole of Bored-Land and, to be honest, that pretty much sews up yesterday. Which is just as well because if I don’t stop typing soon, my fingers will fall off. Blake is right though. Sometimes, writing stuff down helps you to contemplate your life and make some sense of it all. I actually feel a fair bit better now. And if it wasn’t for the fact that in precisely two hours I have to be at Gareth’s house for Sunday lunch, I’d possibly even feel OK.
QuestlONs I’D Like aNswereD
A few years ago, Ruthie gave me a book for my birthday which was called Why Is Snot Green? I liked that book a lot because it held the answers to some of the really important and intriguing mysteries of life. As well as explaining in very clear detail why snot is such a revolting shade of green, it also shed light on a lot of other interesting worldly phenomena. Stuff like: Where does all the water go when there’s a low tide? and Can animals talk? I read that book from cover to cover and, from its pages, I learned more interesting information than I ever do in an entire year from the boring teachers at school. Earlier this evening, I got that book off my shelf again and had another flip through it. This time it didn’t give me the answers I really need. It seems to me that the older you get, the more complicated life becomes and the more difficult it is to find satisfactory responses to the questions that are niggling at you. Questions like:
What does it feel like when you’re doing it?
Ruthie has already made it categorically clear that she is not going to provide me with the answer to this one. Fat lot of use she is.
Why do I keep saying that Winnie is not keeping me awake every night when, actually, he blatantly is?
In fairness, I am the only person in the entire world who is in a position to answer this question. But even I’m struggling to answer it. Even though I like having Winnie around, I can’t say that I appreciate his all-night acrobatics. So why don’t I just say something to my mum?
I am a total mystery unto myself. This means that I have something in common with Neil Adam. We are both Welsh enigmas.
Why oh why oh why don’t I just say sorry to Goose?
This is one of the most troubling questions of all. I’m sick to the back teeth of the current state of affairs concerning Goose. In all truthfulness, she is one of the funniest and most interesting people I have ever met. We’ve got so much in common – it’s as if we
were specifically designed to be best friends with each other. Off the top of my head, these are just some of the similarities we share.
1.
We can both recite large chunks of the Free Willy film scripts off by heart.
2.
We are both highly experimental practitioners of the temporary hair colour application.
3.
We both know a lot about shoes.
4.
We have both flirted with the philosophy of Existential Absurdism.
5.
We have both flirted with Neil Adam aka Mad Alien.
6.
We can both eat an entire family bag of marshmallows in under two minutes.
7.
We can both say, ‘What’s cooking in your crazy hot kitchen, baby?’ in Welsh.23
8.
We both think science is deadly dismal.
9.
We both, on occasion, like to pretend we’re from Kentucky and speak for extended periods of time in fake American accents.
10.
We are both very good at speed-walking.
So, frankly, it’s utterly ridiculous that we’re still not talking to each other. Today, in English, I had to sit next to Goose again and not be her friend for a whole hour and ten minutes. Every single second was terrible and there were four thousand and two hundred of them! What was even worse was that Mr Wood told everyone to work in pairs to answer questions on the nature of friendship in The Picture of Dorian Gray. Goose looked at the first question and then, without smiling or seeming in any way interested in hearing my opinion, she said, ‘What do you think then?’
I looked at the question. It was this: Lord Henry says, ‘I like to know everything about my new friends and nothing about my old ones.’ What does this tell us about Lord Henry?
‘I dunno,’ I said and shrugged my shoulders.
‘Me neither,’ said Goose, and then she said something which sounded like, ‘Phrrrphh,’ and put her head on the desk.
I looked at it again and tried to figure it out. After a moment or two, I added, ‘I suppose it means that Lord Henry is a shallow, backbiting idiot because he bins off his old friends in favour of his new ones.’
Goose sat up and gave me a hard look. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘Nothing,’ I said.
Goose gave me another hard look. Eventually she said, ‘Or maybe it just tells us that Lord Henry is more interested in his new friends because his old ones are boring and selfish.’
I felt myself getting annoyed. I said, ‘What exactly are you trying to say, Gail?’
Goose said, ‘I’m not exactly trying to say anything, Charlotte.’
‘Well, don’t then,’ I said.
‘Well, I won’t,’ she answered.
‘Well, good then,’ I said.
‘Well, whatever,’ said Goose.
And then we both just sat and didn’t speak to each other for the whole lesson and just answered the questions by ourselves. By the time the bell rang, I’d finished all of them. I don’t think I’ve ever worked so hard in my entire life. Mr Wood was really impressed and gave us each a merit mark. I wasn’t really that fussed by mine. In fact, I’d have happily shoved that poxy merit mark up his backside if it meant that things could go back to how they used to be. Once upon a time, me and Goose used to be far too busy messing about to get merit marks. To be honest, I really miss her. Which is why I suppose I ought to say sorry.
But since yesterday, all these perplexing puzzles have had to take a back seat in my head because the question which has really been puzzling me is this one:
Why do boys’ bedrooms smell of wood?
All boys’ bedrooms smell of wood. This is not an opinion. It’s a fact. I’d even go as far as to say it’s an olfactory fact! Sometimes it’s a pungent woody smell like our oak kitchen table, and other times it’s more of a general woody aroma like the smell of trees in a forest. Then again, sometimes it’s quite a whiffy woody smell like you get from the dirty wood shavings at the bottom of a hamster’s cage. I have no idea what actually causes this wood-smelling phenomenon. I can only think that it stems from a gaseous substance which radiates naturally out of boys’ bodies. Girls’ rooms are very different. Take my room, for example. Even though I’ve got an elderly chinchilla living in my room in a cage containing sawdust and sand, he doesn’t make my room smell funny. In actual fact, it’s the other way round. My room has made Winnie smell nice. This morning I picked up Winnie and sniffed him all over and I couldn’t detect anything except faint hints of hairspray and Impulse. I’m quite sure that Winnie wouldn’t be so sweetly fragrant if he was living in a boy’s room.
All boys’ rooms have that woody whiff. Goose’s twin brothers, Bill and James, share a big bedroom and it absolutely reeks of wood. The smell of it hits you, like a gigantic toppling Canadian Redwood, as soon as you open the door. I wouldn’t even be surprised if Goose’s dad has to paint their walls with creosote to stop them from going all mushy and rotten. Then there’s my little brother, Caradoc. His bedroom still has quite a babyish aroma about it but, even so, during my last visit to Wrexham, I’m sure I could detect the very beginnings of the woody smell taking hold in his bedroom. It also smells a little bit of wee. Now I’m thinking about it, I really wish it had occurred to me to ask Ruthie about the room that Michel sleeps in. It’s too late now because they both got the bus back to Aberystwyth last night but I’m prepared to bet all the money in the world that this woody smell is not merely a feature of British males and their bedrooms. I bet Michel’s room smells like a French forest filled with fuggy fir trees.
Gareth’s bedroom smells a bit like our garden fence. It’s not unpleasant but there’s definitely a scent of outdoors and also a hint of something quite sturdy and practical hanging in the air. It’s the same kind of smell I sniff when my mum drags me into the DIY store to buy door handles and coat hooks.
Until yesterday, I’d never actually been in Gareth’s house and I certainly hadn’t been in his bedroom. To be honest, the prospect of seeing where Gareth eats and sleeps and does all his other private personal business had been making me feel a bit nervous. I mean, what if his house was really freaky! But it’s also been making me feel incredibly nosy, so by the time I actually got to go round there, I could hardly even wait for Gareth to open the front door. It was all I could do to stop myself from barging right past him so that I could start having a good look round. I was expecting it all to be a bit scruffy like The Jean Genie hair salon. But actually it isn’t. Although my mum wouldn’t like me to say it, his house is a lot tidier than ours. Everywhere is completely shiny and spotless. Even Gareth’s bedroom looked as if it had been recently tidied up. I couldn’t spot a single dirty coffee mug anywhere in his entire room and, currently, I think there are about five in mine. Gareth’s walls are painted dark blue and mostly covered in framed posters of U2 and the Welsh rugby team. All his rugby books are neatly arranged in order of height on a metal shelf screwed to the wall and all his rugby DVDs are displayed on a wire stand which is shaped like a saxophone. His bed is covered in a duvet which has a giant Welsh flag printed on it and he has a rug and curtains which match. Everything is so completely tidy that when I saw it, I was a bit spooked. ‘Nice room, Gaz,’ I said as I perched awkwardly on the end of his Welsh dragon bed and then, for no reason that I can remember, I glanced upward. On the ceiling, right above my head, was a massive poster of Britney Spears wearing nothing but a skimpy gold bra and skimpy gold hot pants. It gave me a bit of a shock. I suppose I’m not very used to boys’ bedrooms. I said, ‘So you’re a Britney fan, then, Gareth? Or is it your dad’s?’
Gareth looked up at the ceiling and turned bright red. Then he said, ‘Oh yeah, that! My mum won’t let him put it up in their bedroom so he just shoved it on the ceiling in here to keep it out of the way.’
Gareth is very sweet but he does occasionally underestimate my common sense.
Gareth’s mum was downstairs cooking us a r
oast turkey lunch. When I’d walked past the dining room earlier, I’d caught a glimpse of a table laid with napkins and candles. Our dining table only ever looks like that at Christmas. ‘Wow!’ I’d said. ‘My mum usually makes our Sunday lunch from a packet mix and we have it on our laps while we’re watching the telly.’
Jean Stingecombe had laughed and said, ‘Nothing’s too much trouble for my Gazzy and his young lady, is it, Mick?’
Mick Stingecombe is Gareth’s dad. He’s even bigger and beefier than Gareth and he has a bristly white head and a thick neck. When I arrived, he was wearing a Welsh dragon apron and making Yorkshire puddings. He didn’t look like a Britney Spears fan. He said, ‘No, Jean,’ and smiled at us.
Jean said, ‘We’re delighted to have you for lunch, aren’t we, Mick?’
Gareth’s dad said, ‘Yes, Jean.’
Jean Stingecombe laughed and said, ‘Gazzy hasn’t ever brought a girlfriend home before, has he, Mick?’
Gareth’s dad said, ‘No, Jean.’
As we were walking up the stairs to his bedroom, Gareth said, ‘I told you my parents would be embarrassing. They’re perfectly harmless though.’
From the kitchen, I heard Jean Stingecombe say, ‘Can I trust you with those Yorkshire puds, Mick?’
And I heard Gareth’s dad say, ‘Yes, Jean.’
‘Does your dad say anything other than yes and no?’ I whispered.
‘Oh yeah,’ laughed Gareth. ‘Occasionally. If you’re very lucky, you might hear him say something else, later.’
In the privacy of his fence-smelling bedroom and underneath the Britney Spears poster, I said, ‘I’m sorry about last night, Gaz.’
Gareth said, ‘Forget about it. It wasn’t your fault.’
‘Wasn’t it?’ I said hopefully.
‘Nah. I’d pigged out on too much junk. Coach Jenkins reckons we’ve got to learn to enjoy pleasure in moderation if any of us are going to make it as professional rugby players.’