by Josie Silver
I’m going to trade truths with Laurie, and we’re going to become the best of friends. That, ladies and gentlemen, is my grand plan.
She drums her nails against the edge of her glass, thinking, and I find I’m really interested to hear what she’s going to say. She looks down into the dregs of her wine, and when she raises her eyes, she’s laughing.
“Okay, I was fourteen, fifteen maybe.” She breaks off and presses her hand to her red cheek, shaking her head. “I can’t believe I’m going to tell you this.”
That giddy laugh again, and she lowers her lashes, making me duck down to catch her eye.
“Come on, you’ve got to tell me now,” I cajole.
She sighs with resignation. “I was with Alana, my best friend at the time, and we were at the school disco trying to pretend we were super-cool. I think we might even have had a box of cigarettes, although neither of us smoked.”
I nod, wanting to hear more.
“And there was this boy, as there always is, and I really fancied him. Half the school did, in actual fact, but by some miracle he seemed to like me too.”
I want to butt in and tell her that it’s not a miracle or even a surprise really, but I don’t.
“So he finally asks me to dance at the end, and I nonchalantly accept, and it’s all going really well until I look up sharply just as he looks down at me, and I full-on head-butt him in the face and break his nose.” She looks at me, wide-eyed, and then laughter bubbles up in her throat. “Blood everywhere. They had to call him an ambulance.”
“No way.” I shake my head slowly. “Wow, you’re a really shit date, Laurie.”
“I wasn’t even dating him,” she protests. “I wanted to, but it never got off the ground after that. No surprise, really.” Knocking her knuckles on her skull, she shrugs. “Iron hard, by all accounts.”
“Okay, so now you’re a ninja mafia moll with an exceptionally hard cranium. I can understand what Sarah sees in you.”
She plays it straight. “I reckon I must make her feel safe.”
“I’ll say. You really should think about charging protection money. Pay your student loan off in no time.”
Laurie puts her wineglass on the table and leans back, tucking her dark hair behind her ears as she settles cross-legged, facing toward me. When I was a kid we went on annual family holidays to Cornwall, and my mother had a thing for those tiny little pixies you could buy, usually sitting on toadstools or something equally twee. Something in the neatness of Laurie’s lotus position and the point of her chin when she smoothes her hair behind her ears reminds me of those pixies now, and for a second I experience a jolt of homesickness out of the blue. As if she is familiar, even though she isn’t.
“Your turn.” She grins.
“I don’t think I have anything that measures up,” I say. “I mean, I’ve never even head-butted a woman.”
“What kind of man are you?”
She feigns disappointment, and even though she is joking, I consider her question seriously.
“A good one, I hope?”
Her laughter dies in her throat. “I hope so too.”
I know she means for Sarah’s sake.
“How about this one…” I change the subject abruptly. “Let me tell you about my sixth birthday party. Imagine a small child who got buried in the ball pit and then got so scared that his dad had to navigate the jungle of slides and scramble nets to find him. I was three foot under the balls and crying so much that I threw up. They had to clear the place.” I have a vivid flashback to the faces of the horrified parents of the kid whose party dress got splattered with my chocolate-cake puke. “Funnily enough, my party invitation rate dropped off sharply after that.”
“Oh, now that’s a sad story,” she says, and I don’t even think she’s joking.
I shrug. “I’m a man. I’m made of tough stuff.”
She raps her knuckles on her skull again. “You forget who you’re talking to here.”
I nod, solemn. “Ironwoman.”
“The very same.”
We fall silent and assimilate what we now know of each other. For my part, I know that she’s awkward with men and likely to cause injury. For hers, she knows I scare easily and am liable to throw up over her. She takes the empty ice-cream carton and spoon from me and leans sideways to slide it onto the coffee table, and despite my best efforts, my man brain observes the movement of her limbs, the sliver of breast I can see under her arm, the inward curve at the base of her spine. Why do women have to have all of that going on? It’s really not okay. I want to be platonic friends with Laurie, yet my brain is filing away her every movement, storing her up, building a map of her in my head so I can visit her every now and then in my sleep. I don’t want to. When I’m awake, I really don’t think of Laurie in that way, but my sleeping brain doesn’t seem to have received the memo.
In sleep, I’ve observed that her skin is creamy pale and that her eyes are the color of forget-me-nots. Laurie’s eyes are a fucking summer hedgerow. And now I can add that pronounced curve at the small of her back, and that she gets giddy after wine, and how she bites her bottom lip when she’s thinking. Times like this, my photographic memory becomes more an impediment than advantage. Of course, Laurie’s not the only woman I have dreams about, but she seems to warrant a more regular walk-on role than most. Not that I’m dreaming of other women all the time. I’m going to stop now, because I’m making myself sound like a closet sleazebag.
“Right, I guess that makes it my turn again,” she says. I nod, glad that she’s derailed my train of thought.
“You’re going to have to go some to top the head-butt story.”
“I started too strong,” she agrees, chewing her lip again, struggling to dredge up something suitable.
To help her, I chuck out a few prompts.
“That embarrassing incident when you went out in high winds without knickers?” She smirks but shakes her head. “Poisoned someone with your cooking? The time you accidentally kissed your sister’s boyfriend?”
Her features soften, a sudden study of nostalgia and other emotions I find hard to read as they slide over her face. Christ. I must have said something really wrong, because now she’s blinking hard, as if she has something in her eyes. Like tears.
“God. Shit, I’m sorry,” she mutters, dashing the backs of her hands furiously across her eyes.
“No, no. I am,” I rush, still not sure what I’ve said to provoke such a reaction. I want to hold her hand, cover her kneecap with my palm, something, anything to say I’m sorry, but I can’t quite make my hand move.
She shakes her head. “It’s really not your fault.”
I wait for her to gather herself. “Want to talk about it?”
She looks down, pinching the skin on the back of her hand, small repetitive motions; a coping mechanism, using physical pain to detract from emotional upset. My pain-in-the-ass brother, Albie, wears an elastic band around his wrist that he snaps for the same reason.
“My little sister died when she was six years old. I’d just turned eight.”
Shit. I take back that description of my brother. He’s four years younger than me and it’s true that he can be a right royal pain in the ass, but I love the fucking bones of him. I can’t even bear to think of the world without him in it.
“Jesus, Laurie.”
This time I don’t think twice. As a tear rolls down her cheek I reach out and swipe it away with my thumb. Then she’s really crying and I’m stroking her hair and shushing her as a mother soothes a child.
“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have blurted that out,” she gulps after a couple of minutes where both of us say nothing, pushing the heels of her palms into her eyes. “It caught me right out of nowhere. I haven’t cried about it for ages. Must be the wine.”
“I always say I only have a brother whenever anyone asks. I feel disloyal not mentioning her, but it’s easier than telling people the truth.” She’s calmer now, drawing in slow, shaky breaths.
I have no real clue how to say the right thing in this situation, but I try; I have at least a small idea of how she might be feeling. “What was her name?”
Laurie’s face floods with warmth, and her vulnerability sears straight through me. Piercing, acute longing, bittersweet, as if something has been missing from her for too long. She sighs heavily as she turns to lean her back against the sofa beside me, pulling her knees up and wrapping her arms around them. When she speaks again her voice is low and measured, like someone giving a rehearsed speech at a loved one’s funeral.
“Ginny was born with a heart condition, but she was bright, and God, was she smart. She ran rings round me. She was my best friend.” She pauses for a brief second, bracing herself for impact, as if she knows that telling the next part of her story is going to physically hurt. “Pneumonia. She was here one moment and then she was gone. I don’t think any of us have ever got over losing her. My poor mum and dad…” She trails off, because there aren’t really any suitable words; parents should never have to bury their child. She isn’t pinching her skin anymore; I don’t think there’s a coping mechanism in the world up to the job of distracting you from something like this.
On TV, Nicolas Cage is crashing around on a motorbike, all action and brawn, and here in this small living room I put my arm round Laurie’s shoulders and squeeze her against me. Her body judders with deep breaths, and she lays her head against my shoulder and closes her eyes. I can’t pinpoint the moment she falls asleep, but I’m glad she does because it’s what she needs right now. I don’t move, even though I probably should. I don’t get up and go to bed, even though a wiser man would have. I just sit and keep her company while she sleeps, and it feels…I don’t even know what it feels. Peaceful.
I don’t press my face into her hair.
FEBRUARY 15
Laurie
When I wake up, I know there’s something I need to remember, but my brain feels as if it’s wrapped in fuzzy felt. That’ll be the wine, I think groggily, and then I open my eyes and realize I’m not in bed. I’m still on the sofa, but my bed pillow is beneath my head and I’m snuggled under my duvet. A long squint at my watch tells me it’s only a little after six in the morning, so I lie back and close my eyes, working my way through the evening from the bit that comes most easily to mind.
Ice cream. Wine. Ryan Gosling rowing a boat. Swans. There were definitely swans. And, oh my God, Sarah had had a skin-full! I’ll check on her in a minute, it’s a good job Jack brought her home. Jack. Oh shit. Jack.
My mind sprints straight into panic mode, convincing myself that I must have said or done something terrible and disloyal and that Sarah is going to hate me. He was talking to me, and we were laughing and watching the movie, and then…Oh. And then I remember. Ginny. Sliding deep back inside the cocoon of my duvet, I screw my eyes up tight and let myself remember my sweet, beautiful little sister. Slender fingers, her nails so fragile they were almost translucent, the only other person in the world with eyes just like mine. I have to concentrate really hard to pull her childish voice from my memories, the excited joy of her giggle, the shimmer of her poker-straight blond hair in sunlight. Fractured memories, faded like sun-damaged photographs. I don’t allow myself to think of Ginny very often in day-to-day life, or at all, really; it takes me a long time afterward to reconcile the fact that she simply isn’t here anymore, to not be furious with everyone else for breathing when she isn’t.
I remember last night clearly now. I didn’t do anything morally wrong with Jack, nothing that I need to feel compromised over in the traditional sense this morning, at least; I definitely didn’t show him my boobs or confess true love. Yet still I can’t let myself totally off the hook, because in truth I did cross a line, albeit a fine and almost invisible one. I can clearly feel it tangled around my ankles like fishing wire, ready to trip me up and make a liar out of me. I let myself get too close. All it took was a cheap bottle of wine to lower my guard; for one unwittingly misjudged comment to make me crumble like an abandoned sandcastle when the evening tide comes in.
JUNE 5
Laurie
“Happy birthday, old biddy!”
Sarah blows a streamer in my face to wake me up and I struggle onto my elbows as she breaks into a rousing chorus of “Happy Birthday.”
“Thank you!” I give her a halfhearted round of applause. “Can I go back to sleep now, please? It’s eight o’clock on Saturday morning.”
She frowns. “You’re kidding, right? If you go to sleep now you’ll miss out on golden birthday hours.”
She sounds like one of her favorite Disney characters. “Last time I checked, we weren’t American teenagers on some cheesy TV show,” I grumble.
“Stop moaning and get out of bed right now. I’ve got big plans for you.”
I drop back on my pillow. “I already have a plan. It involves staying here until midday.”
“You can do that tomorrow.” She nods toward a mug on the side. “I made you coffee. You’ve got ten minutes before I come back and really wake you up rudely.”
“You’re too bossy,” I grumble, flinging my arm across my eyes. “I’m twenty-three now, and you’re still twenty-two. I’m old enough to be your mother. Go and clean your bedroom and do your homework.”
She toots on her streamer again as she leaves, laughing, and I shove my head underneath my pillow. I love that girl.
There are two garment bags hanging in the lounge when I emerge exactly nine and a half minutes later, and Sarah is practically hopping on the spot. Even more worryingly, the garment bags are emblazoned with a formal-wear rental company logo.
“Umm, Sar…?” I’m starting to realize she wasn’t kidding when she said she had a plan.
“You’re going to die when you see,” she says, her fists bunched with excitement like a kid on school-trip day.
I place my coffee down slowly. “Should I look now?”
“Yes. But first you have to promise me that you’ll do exactly as I say for the next few hours, no questions asked.”
“You sound like an undercover spy. Have you and Jack been watching too much James Bond again?”
She holds one of the garment bags out toward me, but clutches on to it when I go to take it from her. “Promise first.”
I laugh and shake my head, intrigued. “Go on, then, I promise.”
She hands it over with a little clap, then flaps her hands for me to hurry up and look inside. Holding it out at arm’s length, I give it a shake and then slide the central zipper down a few inches to sneak a glimpse.
“It’s pink…” I say, and she nods, fast.
I whoosh the zip all the way down and shrug the plastic cover off, revealing an instantly recognizable cotton-candy-pink satin bomber jacket and black satin leggings.
“You want me to dress up as a Pink Lady for my birthday?”
She grins and whips her own outfit out. “Not just you.”
“We’re both pink ladies.” I speak slowly, because I’m somewhat confused. “I mean, I kind of love it already as a birthday theme, but what are we going to do once we’re dressed? Because we’re going to stick out like sore thumbs down The Castle.”
“We’re not going to the pub.” Sarah’s eyes gleam with anticipation.
“Can I ask where we are going?”
She laughs. “You can ask, but I won’t tell you the truth.”
“How did I know you were going to say that?”
She unzips her jacket and slides her arms into it. “You have seen the movie, right?”<
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“Once or twice.” I roll my eyes, because everyone on the planet has seen Grease at least a dozen times, usually because it’s on TV on New Year’s Day and you can’t physically bring yourself to move and find the remote.
I hold up my satin leggings doubtfully. The waistband is about six inches across. “I hope they stretch,” I say.
“They do. I tried them on at about six o’clock this morning.”
Her words make me realize how hard she’s trying to give me a fun birthday; and the part of my mind that’s constantly feeling guilty at the moment gives me a hefty dig. Whatever it is she has planned for us today, I need to give her my one hundred percent best.
“Pink Ladies it is, then,” I say with a laugh.
She looks at her watch. “We need to leave at eleven. Go and jump in the shower, I’ve already been in. I’ll do your flicky eyeliner for you when you’re out.”
* * *
It’s midday and we’re on a train out of Waterloo, and it’s fair to say we’re getting our fair share of odd looks. I’m not surprised. We’re the only Pink Ladies on board today, and we definitely have the most fabulous hair and makeup. Sarah’s gone with a high, flippy ponytail that seems to swish around independently of her head, and between us we’ve wrangled mine into bubble curls Olivia Newton-John herself would be envious of. Sarah’s thought of everything: gum for us to chew, jaunty black neck scarves, white-rimmed plastic shades perched in our hair and gin-in-a-tin for the train to get us in the mood for wherever it is we’re going.
“Should we assume fake names?”
Sarah considers my question seriously. “What would yours be?”