He always does this. He seems to know when I’ve had enough of him and turns up being so sweet and affectionate that I forgive him for all his past sins.
‘So, do you want me to use my ancient fire-making skills to cook meat as well?’ demanded Carter. ‘It might take my mind off the fact that you’ve still got four buttons undone on your top.’
Although my plans for a boy-shape-free zone had been ruined, the barbecue was actually a success. Once Nat had turned up and everyone had pretended to eat and given up because it was too hot, a game of girls versus boys footie had started. After we’d trounced them five goals to two and had collapsed on the grass while Poppy ordered Grace (who hadn’t played) to make us some drinks, I found myself sitting next to Veronique. I thought she’d have been all snooty about doing something as uncool as playing six-a-side footie but she’d been the girl of the match, scoring three of our goals. ‘You were really good,’ I told her. ‘I couldn’t believe the way you tackled Will like that.’
She grinned at me. ‘I’m quite skilful when it comes to getting rid of the opposition but then you’d know all about that, wouldn’t you, dear?’
I didn’t know how she could sit in my back garden, drinking my wine and have the nerve to say something like that. She wasn’t talking about football. Oh no. She was talking about me and Dylan and doing it when no-one else was around so she could keep her sweet girl rep. I tried to count to ten and not have a major hissy fit but I’d only got to five when I saw Poppy bearing down on me with my acoustic guitar.
‘It’s too hot,’ I told her before she could even open her mouth. ‘My fingers are way too sweaty to play.’
‘I’m not taking no for an answer,’ Poppy said, blithely ignoring my pained face. ‘Everyone’s dying to hear us.’
‘No they’re not,’ I argued. But Shona who was sitting nearby gave me an evil smile and cooed, ‘Are you going to do that acoustic set that I’ve been looking forward to all day?’
Poppy hauled me to my feet, still protesting, and shoved the guitar at me. ‘You strum, I’ll sing and Atsuko and Darby are going to improvise.’
Accompanied by Darby on a tambourine that she’d pulled out of her backpack and with Atsuko on harmonies, we did a couple of our own songs which sounded weird, quite frankly, without the full-on shouty treatment before launching into our version of Rihanna’s ‘Rude Boy’.
When we’d finished I caught Dylan’s eye, he was staring at me with such longing that it made me catch my breath. It was only when Simon asked if we were going to take any requests and Poppy dug me none too gently in the ribs that the moment passed.
‘I can’t play that many things,’ I insisted when Will and Robbie pleaded with us to play something by Tinie Tempah. ‘I can do some Beatles and that’s about it.’
Any oldster stumbling into the back garden would have been delighted that young people could still make their own entertainment as we spent the next half hour singing along to Beatles songs and forgetting most of the words.
By the time my strumming hand had started to cramp up, it was getting dark. It was still swelteringly hot, so I lit little Chinese lanterns to keep the midges away and switched on my fairy lights, which I’d draped over the trelliswork before everyone had arrived. Our garden had been transformed into a fairy grotto. I lay back on the grass contentedly and listened to the conversation washing over me. It was so nice when everybody forgot all the reasons why they hated each other and just chilled out. Even Carter and Dylan seemed to be having a civil conversation about the Surrealist Movement. Art boys, eh?
I wasn’t the only one inspired by all this group bonding as I heard Simon suddenly exclaim, ‘We should all go to a festival before summer’s out.’
I rolled my eyes. The day I went to a festival and slept in a tent without the benefit of my summer-weight duvet was the day they buried me. No-one else seemed to share my opinion though. There were enthusiastic noises of agreement from all sides and I could have voiced my dissent but knowing how flaky my guests were I reckoned that any mass outings were never going to happen. I smirked as Will mentioned that a record company sales rep had offered him some cheap tickets to a festival in Devon then frowned as Poppy added that Anna would probably let us borrow the café’s van. This was starting to sound suspiciously like a plan. I was just about to point out all the pitfalls of sharing a field with a bunch of tree-hugging hippies when Atsuko plonked herself down next to me.
‘D’you wanna know a secret?’ she giggled.
‘Yeah!’
‘I think Simon’s really cute,’ she whispered. ‘He’s just asked me if I want to go to a gig with him tomorrow.’
‘Cool,’ I said. ‘Simon’s a sweetie.’
‘You should know,’ came Veronique’s voice from somewhere behind me. ‘She got off with him,’ she added for Atsuko’s benefit.
I sat up and glared at her. ‘Who told you that?’
Veronique held my gaze. ‘Carter told me. It wasn’t a secret, was it?’
I was going to kill Carter. Once in a moment of weakness I’d told him that I’d snogged Simon. And I only told him because we were having an intimate moment and it seemed like a good idea to be honest with each other. My mistake.
I jumped to my feet as Shona came over to investigate the raised voices. ‘It was a one-off,’ I told Atsuko, who was looking at me with a hurt expression. ‘We’d both had too much to drink…’
But Veronique wasn’t finished. ‘In fact, the only boy she hasn’t made a play for seems to be Paul,’ she remarked to Shona conversationally. ‘I’d keep your eyes on him, if I were you.’
‘That’s not funny, Veronique,’ hissed Shona as I tried to count to ten again. It was no use. I was going to whack Veronique if I stayed in the garden. She was just standing there, a satisfied smile on her face. With a frustrated groan I took a step towards her but Atsuko grabbed my arm and dragged me into the kitchen. The strip light made my eyes hurt as Atsuko pulled me towards the sink and told me to splash cold water on my face.
‘I kissed him once,’ I repeated. ‘’Cause I was upset and I was trying to make Dylan jealous. It was a hideous mistake. We don’t even talk about it…’
Atsuko held up a hand. ‘OK, just calm down,’ she said soothingly. ‘It kinda freaked me out for a minute that you’d snogged him but it’s all right.’
‘Really?’
‘Look, I’m not that naïve,’ Atsuko said with a smile. ‘Simon seems like a bit of a player but I can work with that. Obviously he’s been with other girls, I just didn’t realise you were one of them.’
‘I wasn’t with him,’ I protested. ‘It was just a kiss.’
‘I know,’ said Atsuko. ‘Please don’t start getting hysterical. Go upstairs and put on some more mascara, you’ve washed yours all off. And I’m going to go and ask Simon if you’re a good snog. Joke!’
‘Oh, ha ha,’ I said sourly but I followed orders and walked slowly upstairs. I didn’t re-apply my Maybelline Wonderlash but I sat on my bed with my head in my hands. ‘Sometimes I just want to disappear and never come back.’
I must have said it out loud ’cause I heard Dylan’s voice from the doorway saying, ‘I don’t know what I’d do if you left.’
‘You’d manage,’ I told him, looking up and in that split second that our eyes collided, it was almost as if I was back in his living room because the tension was there again and the only thing that was preventing us from kissing was our own willpower. Which seemed to be in very short supply.
I held out my arms as Dylan practically stumbled towards me and then we fell back on my bed, his body covering every inch of me, our lips searching and then finding. All my nerve endings were so over-sensitised that when Dylan kissed my neck I whimpered because it felt so good even though it felt totally wrong too. I tried to pull him back to me as he suddenly shifted away from me. But he was only pulling his T-shirt over his head and throwing it on the floor before settling back in my arms. He planted little kisses along the way as he un
did each button on my top and our legs tangled with each other, as my skirt rode up.
The last fragment of my rational mind registered the irony of the situation. Like, Carter had been badgering me for weeks and all I could do was come up with excuses about it not being the right time or the right place and now I was with Dylan and the door was wide open and anyone could burst in on us and I didn’t care. All I cared about was the scrape of Dylan’s teeth on my tongue and the frantic drumming of his heart against my chest and the chaos his fingers were causing as he stroked my back.
‘Make me stop,’ Dylan groaned, making no effort to pull away from me.
‘I don’t want you to stop,’ I whispered and Dylan caught my mouth again in a hard, frantic kiss. His hand curled into the waistband of my skirt and nothing was going to stop…
‘Edie. Um, Edie…’
There it was again, that nagging little voice that must have been my conscience.
‘Edie!’
Dylan paused. ‘Did you hear something?’ Was my conscience that loud? I tried to get into the kissing and the thundering towards losing my virginity again but the moment was gone. Especially when I glimpsed Grace standing at the doorway looking like she was about to burst into tears and bleating, ‘Edie! Edie!’ at me.
In one movement I pushed Dylan away and jack-knifed off the bed.
‘How long have you been there?’ I yelled at her, once again grabbing the sides of my top and folding my arms.
‘I was calling you but you, er, didn’t hear me,’ she whispered in the tiniest voice I’d ever heard.
‘I’m sorry I shouted at you,’ I said, trying to catch my breath. And I was like, my God, she actually speaks. Dylan, with T-shirt back on, stepped in front of me to shield me from her curious gaze. Grace’s eyes were popping out as she looked at him, then me, then back to Dylan again.
‘You never saw this,’ he said to her sharply. ‘Edie and I we’re just… we got carried away.’ He could say that again.
‘People are going now,’ Grace said. ‘They wondered where you were.’ She gave us another incredulous look and scampered out.
‘You’d better go downstairs,’ I said, moving away from him to put as much space between us as possible. ‘Say I was being sick or something. The heat…’
‘Is damage limitation all you can think about?’ Dylan demanded. ‘Don’t you think we should talk about what just happened?’
‘It was stupid what just happened!’ I said fiercely. But it hadn’t been stupid. It had been glorious and wonderful and thrilling. And must never happen again. I walked out of the room without looking back.
It was obvious that everyone was wondering where Dylan and I had disappeared to but I cobbled together some silly story about the heat and eating too many cocktail sausages and vomiting and when Dylan appeared he and Veronique left immediately. The others followed. Shona and Paul stayed behind to help me clear up and finally they went too but Shona was back to being weird with me. Quelle surprise.
I went out into the garden and sank down on the sunlounger. I felt lousy. I was a bad, bad person. I wasn’t to be trusted, especially with other people’s boyfriends. But Dylan was more than someone else’s boyfriend. No matter how hard we tried to be apart from each other, some force that I couldn’t even begin to explain drew us together. Like magnets or something.
‘It went rather well, don’t you think?’
I gave a start as Carter walked towards me.
‘I thought everyone had gone home,’ I muttered.
‘No, I’m still here,’ he said softly. ‘I made you a cup of tea. I heard that you got sick.’
I moved my legs so he could sit on the side of the lounger and took the mug from him. It was dark but I could see the searching look he gave me. And I knew that he knew what Dylan and I had been doing. I just did. And Carter might have been difficult and high-maintenance but he didn’t deserve the treatment he was getting from me.
‘What are you thinking?’ he asked.
My mouth twisted. ‘I was wondering why you put up with me.’
Carter reached out to stroke my hair back from my face. ‘Maybe I think you’re worth the effort.’
It was all very well breaking my heart over Dylan but it was always doomed to failure. Whereas Carter was right here, right now. He wasn’t going anywhere, he was staying with me, despite all the grief I gave him.
‘Carter?’
‘What’s the matter, honey?’ he asked, nestling me into his arms.
‘I’ve been thinking.’ I took a deep breath. ‘I will sleep with you. Not tonight but very soon, I promise.’
21st August
I read this interview with Madonna once and she said if you wanted something badly enough the whole world would conspire to make sure you got it. Much! I want to go to this pikey festival as much as I want to be locked in a room with Veronique but at every turn I’m thwarted. I don’t want to sleep in a tent or have communal showers or be forced to eat veggie burgers injected with large doses of salmonella and I’ve heard awful stories about the toilet facilities at festivals. But every time I say anything about not wanting to go, the girls call me a princess. And not in a good way.
Even Carter, a man famed for the sharpness of his suits and the volume of his quiff, seems uncharacteristically up for roughing it.
At least, I thought, Anna wouldn’t give me, Poppy and Dylan the weekend off but she’s decided to close the café for the bank holiday anyway and she’s even letting us borrow her van. The same van whose back doors fly open if you take a corner too fast.
The parents are my last hope. They do this three times a week phone call thing to make sure I haven’t killed the cat, the plants or myself. Yes, in that order. I’m sure they’ll absolutely forbid me to leave the house unattended for four days.
But I’m not talking to them until tomorrow. AKA THE DAY I GET MY RESULTS! Oh God, I think I’m going to be sick. I’d almost managed to forget about my exams but really I’ve just been kidding myself.
I did do a lot of revision but that was in between severe bouts of boy-related mopeyness and I totally screwed up my French grammar paper. I’m doomed with added bits of doominess.
22nd August
She might be on another continental shelf but my mum can still really piss me off! I was quite happy to wait for my results to arrive in the post but, no, she had to leave strict instructions with Anna. When I got to work this morning she was standing at the door with the van keys in her hand.
‘Hey Anna,’ I said brightly. ‘Shall I put the kettle on?’
‘Nice try, kiddo,’ was Anna’s reply. ‘In the van, I’m taking you to get your results.’
I whimpered something about planning to go in my break but Anna took my arm in a freakishly strong grip, for such a little woman, and practically lifted me onto the passenger seat.
We didn’t say much on the way to the college. Anna asked me once if I was nervous and I lied and said I wasn’t but when we went over a speedbump I thought I was going to puke. Anna took her loco parentis role far too seriously for my liking. She frogmarched me into college, obviously expecting me to bolt, and hauled me over to the noticeboard where the results were pinned up.
I stood there and gazed at a spot just above her head.
‘Do you want me to…?’
I shook my head. ‘No, I’ll do it.’
I tried to look at the board and everything was blurry. I traced a finger down the list until I came to the Ws and found, ‘Wheeler, Edith’. I shut my eyes. This was my last moment of ignorance or irresponsibility. After this, I was either going to go to McDonald’s and fill in an application form or actually commit to spending another three years of my life in an educational establishment. I heard Anna make an impatient clucking sound behind me and I opened my eyes and forced myself to look.
‘What did you get?’ asked Anna with a fair bit of exasperation.
‘A star for History, an A for French, B for Psychology and an A star for English,’ I
managed to say before I burst into tears.
I’d been so good at pretending not to be worried about my results. I’d assumed an air of nonchalance for weeks while secretly angsting about them and while I felt relieved I was also really sad too. Like, now I was set on the path of being a grown-up and having to make big decisions that were going to change my life forever. No wonder I was crying. But Anna was hugging me and then Atsuko and Darby were there and Atsuko had straight A-starred everything and Darby hadn’t done as bad as she’d thought.
We were just about to make our getaway when I saw the college principal bearing down on me. He must have spent the last two years thinking I was a complete thicko because he kept going on and on about how surprised and impressed the faculty were with my results and what was I going to do about university? I muttered something about deferring and having a gap year and, besides, my parents were away and I didn’t want to make any life-changing decisions. And then he said that I might even have a chance at Oxbridge and I just turned to Anna and said, ‘Can we please go now?’
Diary of a Crush: Kiss and Make Up Page 13