by Fiona Gibson
“Our names?” Hannah repeated.
“Yeah. Zoë plus one. You do want to come, don’t you?”
“I don’t really feel like it. Anyway, I don’t have any money.” She didn’t add that she’d had to scrounge money for the birthday meal from her mum—only to discover that Veronica was picking up the tab—as she’d spent her last fifteen quid on a lacy Top Shop vest for a present. A top that Zoë had merely glanced at quickly before dropping it back into the ripped remains of its wrapping and moved swiftly on to more extravagant gifts, like Amelia’s earrings. Hannah wasn’t in the mood for clubbing, or being anyone’s plus one.
“Come on,” Zoë pleaded. “It’s my birthday. I’ll get some money from Mum. You’ve got to—”
“I really don’t want to. I’ll see you over the weekend, okay? I’m going to phone Mum, tell her I’m getting the bus home.”
Zoë’s face drooped with disappointment. “Okay. Sorry, Han, but I’ll have to hurry if I’m meeting Amelia at ten. See yourself out, will you, while I have a shower?”
Dylan was leaning in his bedroom doorway as Hannah left Zoë’s room. “Want to see something?” he asked.
“I’m just going home.”
“Come on,” he urged her, “it won’t take a minute.”
She looked at him. Something about his expression suggested that the ‘something’ was really important. Hannah paused on the landing, hearing the shower being turned on and Zoë singing to herself. “What is it?” she asked.
“Come in. It’s okay, I won’t bite.” The smile lit up his sweet, pale face.
“Okay. Just for a minute.” Hannah stepped into his room. It looked like it belonged to another house. There were no calico walls, no golden letters spelling his name, no cluster of body oils on a dressing table; just colossal piles of magazines, books and rumpled papers.
“Hang on a minute,” Dylan said. He opened his wardrobe and crouched on the floor, rummaging through papers and notebooks at the bottom. He dragged out a pile of folders and spread them on the floor. Hannah sat on the bed, taking in the details of his face: the dark brown eyes that shone vividly from luminous skin, the unkempt dark hair that looked as if he’d hacked at himself with blunt scissors. There was a faint smell—a boy’s bedroomy smell—but it was warm and biscuity rather than outwardly unpleasant. “Here it is,” he said, thrusting Hannah a folder. “Zoë said you’re a really good artist. Tell me what you think.” He flashed a crooked grin. “You can say if you think they’re crap. I can take it.”
She took the folder from him and slid out the drawings. They were comic strips, featuring a girl with creamy skin and purplish hair. She was dressed entirely in black, with fierce determination shining out of her dark eyes, and looked eerily familiar. “Did you really do these?” she asked quietly.
Dylan colored slightly. “Yeah. I’ve been working on them for ages. I was thinking of sending them to a publisher or something, some company that does graphic novels, but maybe you think that’s stupid.”
“I don’t think that’s stupid at all,” she murmured, examining the loose pages in turn. The girl, she discovered, had a friend. A blond, ditzy friend who wanted everyone’s attention and sulked when she didn’t get it. “Not based on your sister, is she?” she said, laughing.
“I, um, don’t really base the characters on real people. They’re just made up.”
“So…what’s the dark-haired one’s name?”
“Haven’t decided yet.”
She nodded, and their eyes met. Usually Hannah hated clutter—her mother’s clutter at least—but Dylan’s felt quirky and interesting. She felt quite at home in the chaotic room. “So, what happens to her in the end? The dark-haired one, I mean?”
“I haven’t decided yet. Maybe you could help me figure it out. If you’ve got time,” he quickly added, “next time you’re here to see Zoë.”
Hannah heard Zoë coming out of the bathroom, humming to herself in her room now, getting ready for her night out. She thought of the assortment of blond girls around the restaurant table—the pretentious restaurant Veronica had chosen—and felt relieved to be here. “Don’t you want to go?” Dylan asked, as if reading her thoughts.
“I don’t like clubbing. It’s never been my thing.”
“Yeah.” He took the drawings from her and spread them out on the floor. Then, as he raked through his CDs and selected one to play, Zoë swept past his open door—either not knowing or caring that Hannah was still there. “Anyway,” Dylan added, “I’m glad you’re not going.”
“Why?” she asked.
“Because you can hang out here. If you want.”
She liked the way he colored easily, the way she felt utterly unintimidated by him. It was good, she realized, to be with someone with whom she felt equal. “Okay,” she said, checking her watch. “I’ll see if Dad’ll pay my taxi fare home.” The front door banged shut, and Hannah heard Zoë clip-clopping down the stone steps.
“See you later, Princess,” Dylan muttered under his breath.
“She’s not so bad,” Hannah said defensively.
“You don’t live with her.”
“She can be really sweet,” Hannah added. “You know what she did when we were in Scotland? She gave me these.” She rummaged in her bag and pulled out the yellow box. Since Zoë had given her the worry dolls, she’d taken to carrying them with her at all times. They’d worked, too. The weight of the Ollie stuff had fallen away.
Dylan took the box from her and lifted its lid. “Where did you get these?”
“I told you. Zoë got them for me. It’s amazing, what she did—they used to be mine. I’d hid them under the floor at Dad’s old house, but he moved out before I could get them.” She glanced at Dylan, who was watching her intently. “Zoë went to the house and explained what had happened. That’s how I got my worry dolls back.”
Dylan bit his lip. “What is it?” Hannah asked.
“Nothing.” He replaced the lid and handed the box back to her.
“Dylan, tell me….”
His eyes looked huge and deep. “I don’t…she made it up, Han. The story about going to your dad’s house…”
“How d’you know?” She was angry now—what was she doing, listening to Zoë’s little brother? He was fourteen, for God’s sake. A baby.
“Have a look at the dolls,” he said quietly. She tipped them onto her palm and regarded him coolly. “Look at the blue one,” he added. “See the thread stuff’s unraveling?”
Hannah looked down and nodded. “If you unwind the thread,” Dylan continued, “you’ll see some writing on the wooden part inside it.”
Slowly, Hannah unwound the thread. If this was a game, she was prepared to play along, if only to prove that Dylan was as weird as Zoë had said. She wanted to leave now, hurry round to her dad’s and call a cab. A sliver of wood lay on her palm now. A sliver on which someone had written, in the same ultrafine black pen as Dylan had used for his comic strip. “It says Dylan,” Hannah said, frowning.
He smiled warmly and touched her hand. “She nicked them from my room, Han. I had worry dolls, too. Those are mine.”
43
Perhaps she’d done it wrong. Jane stared at the pregnancy test. Perhaps her pee had seeped into the wrong part of the stick, or she’d done it too soon for the test to be accurate. Or—Jane favored this version—she was in the midst of some hellish, hyper-real nightmare and would soon jolt back to safe, nonpregnant reality in her bed.
Of course the test could be faulty. Jane studied the box: “Proven to be 99% accurate”, it said. Knowing with absolute certainty that she couldn’t have another child, she clung to the hope that she represented that rogue 1%. She’d never wanted another baby after having Hannah. Hannah had been enough, all she’d ever wanted; with her baby, and Max, life had felt complete. Although Hannah had been unplanned—“Have you given a thought to your future?” her mother had barked—she’d never felt so certain, so right.
And here she was, fifteen
years later, with dread coursing through her veins.
“Jane? It’s me!” Sally’s voice ricocheted around the house as she let herself into the hall.
“Won’t be a minute,” Jane called down.
There was some clattering downstairs, and a rustling of carrier bags. “I’ll stick this wine in your freezer, okay? Can’t understand why the store doesn’t have one of those chiller machines, or at least put cheap white wine in the fridge and not just the expensive stuff….”
Jane was still gripping the stick. She didn’t care about wine or chilling machines. Christ, by rights she shouldn’t even be drinking. She examined her reflection in the bathroom mirror. She looked gaunt and strained, but not pregnant. She certainly didn’t look like a woman who’d gone back to the house of a man she barely knew and had head-exploding sex on a tumble of soft blankets and sweet-smelling sheets while his seven-year-old son was being Chief Dalek at a sleepover party. If only she’d waited until morning to go to pack up her panel in Archie’s studio. If only she hadn’t been so mad that night she’d overheard Hannah and Zoë discussing her crumbling ovaries and booked a place on that wretched course.
“Jane,” Sally called over the low music she’d put on, “are you okay up there?”
“I’m fine.” Jane glanced at the bathroom bin into which she and Hannah dropped used disposable razors. No, couldn’t risk her finding it. Grabbing a length of toilet paper, she wrapped it tightly around the stick. Now it looked like a miniature Egyptian mummy. Stuffing it into the back pocket of her jeans, she fixed on a too-bright smile, which she feared verged on the manic, and headed downstairs.
Sally was in the kitchen. She had obviously decided that chilling the wine in the freezer would be too long and drawn-out a process and was instead plopping ice cubes into two glasses. “I’m impressed you’ve got ice,” she said without looking up.
Jane watched the wine swirling into the glass as Sally poured it. She wished she could feel pleased about having ice. “It’s left over from Hannah’s party,” she said flatly.
Sally glanced at her. “God, Jane, you look washed out. Been working late?”
“Yes, a bit.”
“I thought ditching your job was supposed to give you more time…you look beat…”
“Sally, I—”
“Bet you never used that massage voucher I gave you,” Sally rattled on. “Come on, let’s go through, get cosy. Where’s Hannah tonight?”
“It’s Zoë’s birthday do. Veronica’s organized some meal out….” Jane was aware of her voice, but it sounded as if it were drifting from someone else’s mouth. A bunch of teenagers were throwing some kind of inflatable Frisbee across the park. Jane could feel Sally studying her, knowing there was something else. She couldn’t tell her. Telling her would make it real, and a real pregnancy required decisions and explanations, even though what she’d done wasn’t wrong—just sex, for God’s sake…. Jane was aware of the hardness of the pregnancy test in her jeans pocket.
“Have you eaten?” Sally asked.
“No. I’m not really hungry. D’you want cheese on toast or something?”
“Please.”
Relieved to escape from Sally’s penetrating gaze, Jane headed for the kitchen, where she took the stick from her pocket and glared at it. Then she jammed it deep into the kitchen bin as if, concealed beneath a layer of bread wrappers, eggshells and carrot peelings, it would cease to exist.
44
Hannah had imagined that a handful of people might wander into the launch of FoxLove Foods—the kind of mumbling weirdoes who hung about in libraries, twiddling on the computers because they had nothing better to do on a Thursday afternoon. In fact the conference room was full to capacity. Row upon row of women, and the occasional man in a T-shirt or ancient-looking sweater, were watching intently as Veronica demonstrated how Nibble ’n’ Lick bars were made—as if each one you saw in the shops would have been lovingly prepared in her own kitchen.
“Each snack bar,” Veronica announced from the stage, “represents a powerhouse of sexual energy to unleash your inner erotic resources.” An image of her hand, swooping dramatically over glass plates of ingredients, was beamed onto the screen behind her. Hannah had agreed to spend two hours distributing samples, along with Zoë and Dylan—who, clearly, had had no choice in the matter—for the princely sum of five quid an hour. She glanced around the conference suite, a nondescript third-floor room in a faceless office building.
“No dairy in these, is there?” A skinny woman with a pale, pinched face peered at the gravelly lumps on Hannah’s tray.
“No, they’re all dairy-free,” Hannah said, hoping that her smile masked the fact that she hadn’t the first idea of what had gone into these things. It could be toenail clippings for all she knew or cared.
The woman picked up a gnarled-looking lump and sniffed it. “Yurumba bark?” she enquired.
“That’s right,” Hannah said.
“Great. You see, I have a mucus problem. Sinuses…” The woman tapped the side of her nose and bit into the lump. “Mmm,” she said, giving Hannah a patronizing pat on the arm before bobbing back down onto her chair.
But now Zoë seemed to be enjoying herself as she toured the edge of the room with her trayful of libido-boosting mega-bites. Was this what the world was coming to, Hannah wondered, that to get in the mood for sex you had to stuff your face with horrible lumps that looked like old fish tank gravel bound together by PVA glue?
“Hey,” Dylan murmured, sidling up to her with his own heavily laden tray, “want to escape for a bit?”
“How?” Hannah asked.
The audience had burst into spontaneous applause. Veronica held aloft a glass dish of sludgy stuff, and a cluster of people had surged toward the demonstration table. “This is the bit where she starts on about igniting libido, blood flow to the genitals and all that….” Dylan shuddered dramatically.
“How d’you know?” Hannah asked, laughing.
“I’ve heard her practicing in her study. Don’t think I can stomach it again. Come on, let’s sneak out for a bit. Mum won’t miss us.”
Hannah smiled. She liked his sweet, pale face, those dark eyes that radiated naughtiness and cheek. “Okay. Where shall we go?”
“I know a place,” he said.
The graveyard wasn’t spooky but filled with beautiful carvings of Madonnas and angels, their edges weathered to softness. Hannah sat on a damp wooden bench, enjoying the feeling of spring sunshine on her face. “So,” Dylan said, sitting at a respectable distance beside her, “did you talk to Zoë about making up all that crap about the worry dolls?”
“Not yet.” Hannah wanted to pick her moment. She hadn’t seen Zoë all week, which was unusual. And today, with the opening night of Little Shop of Horrors a mere five hours away, she didn’t feel up to a confrontation.
“Aren’t you going to?” Dylan asked.
“Yes, of course I am.”
He peered through his bangs at her. “Not scared of her, are you?”
“No, why d’you say that?”
“Because…you shouldn’t be. She really looks up to you with your art and your acting and all that.”
“My acting?” Hannah laughed hollowly.
Dylan looked hurt. “Yeah.”
“Anyway,” Hannah added, “she’s hanging out with Amelia now….”
“No, she’s not. They fell out. That’s what happens with Zoë’s new best friends. It gets really intense and competitive and—”
“It’s not like that with me,” Hannah interjected.
“No,” he said, feigning interest on a blackbird that had landed on a gravestone. “You’re different.”
“What kind of different?”
He turned to look at her. Hannah was seized by an urge to grab some scissors and cut his hair so she could see his eyes properly. “You’re just…you,” he said.
Hannah smiled. She didn’t fancy Dylan exactly—he was in the year below her at school, and thinking anything
about him would be out of the question—yet hanging out here with him was hugely preferable to being trapped in that conference room and have people go on about their sinuses and mucus. “Dylan,” she said suddenly, “d’you want to come tonight? To see the show, I mean?”
“What, and watch you being a Venus Flytrap?”
“Uh-huh.”
His face brightened. “Is Zoë coming?”
“Yes, and my parents.”
“Sure you want me to come?”
“I’d really like it if you were there. I’d feel better.”
“Why?” he asked. “Not nervous, are you?”
Hannah sighed. “There’s this boy, Ollie, who I was sort of seeing. He’s in the show, playing the dentist.”
“So…you dumped him, or what?”
“No, I went round to see him, soon after we’d come back from Scotland, and his mum mistook me for someone else—his proper girlfriend, who turns out to be pregnant….”
Dylan’s eyes widened. “Holy shit.”
“So,” she continued, “I feel like a complete idiot.”
“You’re not an idiot.” He touched her hand.
She smiled, enjoying the warmth of his ink-stained fingers. “Come on,” she said, “We’d better get back. Don’t tell anyone about the pregnant girlfriend thing, okay?”
“I don’t tell anyone anything,” Dylan assured her as they wandered along the grass path that cut its way between the gravestones—a path that Hannah would have followed happily for the rest of the day.
45
The waiting room had a sharp, chemical smell of new carpet. Jane gave her name at the receptionist’s window and skimmed the room, estimating that she’d have to wait half an hour at least. Taking the only available chair, she grabbed a magazine from the table in front of her and opened it randomly, trying to focus on pictures of North African dishes—couscous, tagines—in order to blot out the real reason why she’d come.