The Girl Before You

by Nicola Rayner

  ‘No,’ George laughed, getting to his feet. ‘It’s the last week of term. You absolutely should not be getting on with work. You should be coming out for cocktails and a lavish lunch with me. Come on.’ He pulled her to her feet. ‘Get your coat.’

  The hot hit of vodka in her belly had soothed her. They’d gone to a cocktail bar in town, where the soft lighting and mellow music had helped to ease the fluttering in her belly temporarily.

  It was quiet in the bar, with just one other couple snuggled up together in the corner. Alice recognised the girl – Nicky Crisp, a second year from college who she’d bumped into once or twice at parties in college. She was one of the girls who had been a bit strange when Alice got together with George. Right now, she seemed to be on a date with a huge guy, who had the distinctive build of a rugby player.

  ‘So, am I going to see you over the Easter holidays?’ George asked once they’d ordered.

  ‘I don’t know, are you?’ Alice replied coquettishly.

  He reached across the table and took her hand. ‘I’d like that. You could stay with me in our townhouse. I’d show you Big Ben.’

  Alice smirked. ‘Is that what you’re calling it?’

  George chuckled. ‘You look so sweet and innocent, but you’re just as naughty as the next girl.’

  The next girl. Alice tried not to think about the phrase as he pulled her towards him for a kiss, tried to shake off the feeling of unease when, after they broke away, she noticed Nicky and the guy she was with looking over at them.

  The return of alcohol to her bloodstream after the boozy night before made her face flush hot. She nipped to the bathroom and splashed cold water on her cheeks, stood for a minute or so looking at herself in the mirror. Her day, once again, had been derailed by George’s plans – she’d been meaning to get on with some work and here she was half-cut before three in the afternoon. Maybe it was the alcohol but she felt unsettled, slightly paranoid. She decided to tell George, when she returned to the table, that she needed to get back to college. But as she made her way back to him, she saw he’d ordered a fresh round of drinks.

  ‘Cheers!’ he said, raising his glass to her. ‘To us!’

  Alice smiled. Perhaps she’d stay for just one more, she told herself. They could get back to college after this.

  ‘I mean it, about Easter,’ George said. ‘I’d really love to see you over the holidays.’

  He was really making an effort, she thought, leaning forwards to kiss him.

  Suddenly, though, George pulled sharply away. Nicky’s date had appeared by their table. Up close, he was huge, towering over them.

  ‘George Bell,’ the man said sharply, but he doesn’t smile.

  A strange expression crossed George’s face. ‘Yes?’ For the first time since Alice had been with him he’d looked unsure of himself.

  ‘Will you step outside with me?’ asked the man.

  ‘What’s this about?’ asked George. ‘We’re in the middle of something.’

  ‘Sure,’ agreed the man-mountain. ‘We can sort it out here.’ And he seemed to think about it for a second before punching George hard in the face, sending him splayed onto the ground.

  On the way down, George kicked up under the table and sent their drinks skidding across the floor.

  Alice shrieked and leapt to her feet. The barman, drying a glass, shouted something, but the guy dashed for the door, with Nicky close behind him clutching her bag and coat. Alice crouched down next to George. He blinked a couple of times, moved a hand protectively to his nose, which was bloody and swollen, then sat up cautiously.

  ‘George. Fuck. Who the fuck was that?’ she asked as she helped him up, setting his chair upright and looking helplessly at their spilt drinks all over the floor.

  ‘That a friend of yours?’ demanded the barman, who passed him a handful of napkins from the bar. ‘I don’t want that kind of shit in here.’

  George shook his head. ‘Not a friend,’ he muttered in a muffled voice through the tissue paper.

  The barman started to clear up around them, pointedly moving their chairs away so he could mop the floor.

  ‘Should we go?’ asked Alice. ‘We need to clean up your face.’

  Clutching the napkins to his face, George nodded grimly, got out his wallet and left a crisp fifty on the table.

  ‘I’ll go and get your change,’ said the barman grumpily.

  ‘No,’ insisted George. ‘Keep it.’

  ‘So sorry,’ said Alice to the barman, clutching her bag and coat on the way out.

  Outside, in the afternoon light, she felt embarrassed. ‘Let me look at your nose,’ she said. ‘Do you think you need to go to A & E?’

  ‘God, no,’ laughed George, sounding a bit more like himself. ‘It’s just a bloody nose. Now, where can we get our next drink?’

  ‘Did you see the size of him?’ Alice shook her head. ‘Can I just clean it up first?’

  ‘You don’t want to be seen with me like this.’

  ‘Yup,’ she agreed. ‘It wouldn’t do at all.’

  ‘I think this is just a ploy to get me back to your room again,’ he teased.

  On the way there, they picked up some ice from the college bar.

  ‘What’ve you been up to, George?’ asked the barman. ‘At it again.’

  It was another phrase that turned over in Alice’s head as she cleaned George’s face in her room, putting some ice in a flannel and holding it against his nose.

  ‘George,’ she said at last. ‘Who was he? What was all that about?’

  He shrugged. ‘I dated Nicky for a bit. She was fun, but she wasn’t right for me. Maybe she’s still pissed off.’

  ‘That’s why her date came to smack you around?’

  Alice was quiet for a moment. It just didn’t add up. She looked at George’s swollen face, his bloody shirt, his polished leather shoes. What was she doing? Could she believe anything he said?

  ‘George,’ she said quietly. ‘I don’t know if this is working.’

  Someone turned up the music in the college bar and the sounds of Santana drifted over.

  She felt for a moment that the scales had fallen from her eyes: this was wrong, all wrong for her. The idea of not being with him was sad, yes, but the thought of it actually made her breathe a sigh of relief: no more trying so hard, no more decoding everything he said or did, no more trying to decipher the truth.

  To her horror, George began to cry. It was one of the very few times she ever saw him do that.

  ‘No, Alice. Don’t do this,’ he said. ‘I like you. I like you in a way I never liked the others.’

  ‘Why?’ she said. She comes to sit next to him on the bed.

  ‘You know exactly who you are.’ He takes her hand. ‘You don’t try to please me.’

  I do, she thought. I do that all the time.

  ‘I see you,’ George said. ‘You think I don’t, but I see you for who you are – so strong and determined and bloody-minded. You are the type of woman I want to marry one day. Not the party girls – not the Nicky Crisps.’

  Alice softened. To be seen, she thinks now, remembering the moment: isn’t that what we all want?

  ‘Look,’ he said, opening his arms. ‘We’ve been rolling around for weeks and I’ve waited, haven’t I? I’ve been respectful, I haven’t pushed you to do anything, I haven’t nagged.’

  ‘You have nagged a bit,’ smiled Alice.

  He was right, though. After all that time, his interest hadn’t waned. He’d been more steadfast and kinder than his college reputation seemed to suggest. She stood up and kissed him gently on the mouth. Maybe, she thought, it was time they did this, after all. Maybe that would make everything clearer, without the question of it hanging over them. She kissed him again, resting her hands on his shoulders.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ she said as she helped to peel off his bloody shirt. ‘I promise I’ll be gentle with you.’

  They had sex three times that evening – hastily at first and then more gently
the second time. The third, George woke Alice in the night, kissing her face, saying, ‘I can’t believe I’m getting to do this with you.’

  The next day, they slept late and at lunch George went out to buy champagne and snacks and returned with them to bed.

  ‘Some girls,’ he said into her hair after the fifth or six time they’d done it, as she was drifting back into a boozy sleep, ‘wake up with regrets. They try to rewrite history. But you’re not like them. You’re different.’

  Kat

  May 2000

  George’s hand catches on Kat’s hip as he brushes past her. ‘You’re looking sexy tonight,’ he says, waving to greet Dan on the other side of the room.

  ‘Thanks, George.’ Kat runs a hand through her hair. ‘You don’t scrub up too badly yourself.’ She watches him make his way through the crowded room to Dan.

  There’s something sexy about men touching your hips like that, Kat muses; it’s the right distance from the crucial zone. Close enough to be provocative, far enough to leave something to the imagination. Recently, she’s noticed George noticing her, catching her eye across the room at parties. Nothing major – George flirts with a lot of people – but it’s as if Kat has come into his radar.

  More than once tonight, she looks up and sees Dan and him, handsome in black tie, looking in her direction. It becomes like a joke: she looks up, they’re watching her, they look away, smiling, almost bashful, as if caught doing something wrong.

  Kat takes another glass of champagne from a passing silver tray. She loves the chance to put on a cocktail dress and tonight’s event in the senior common room is a particularly glossy affair. Students more accustomed to Dr Martens and lumberjack shirts have gathered beneath chandeliers, beneath the snooty college deans of old, looking down their noses from oil paintings. Some students seem uncomfortable in black tie, tugging at their necks where the shirt collars dig in or, in the case of the girls, hiding their bodies under baggy cardigans, but Kat loves dressing up, putting on a different persona, teasing her hair into a Fifties do, even painting on a beauty spot. It can be a relief to pretend to be someone else.

  Tonight, she is glad of the distraction. It has been a difficult day. She is still finding it hard, after the Easter holidays, to cope with the reality of Ruth and Richard being together. She finds herself thinking of Richard every morning when she wakes up: how he will never be hers now. Worse, on top of that ache, there’s the thought of Richard and Ruth waking at the same sort of time. Limbs curled around each other in Ruth’s tiny single bed. Isn’t the morning the best part of the day when you’re in love? When you remember who you’re with and their face appears crumpled but smiling, their hair all messy, and then one of you might roll towards the other …

  Kat runs a hand over her eyes. She has tried so hard to shake off the sadness; Kat is not good at feeling sad, sitting with it. Her head has ached all day, her limbs felt heavy. She even tried to go for a run along the beach, and for a few moments she lost herself in the sound of the sea and her trainers slapping against the wet sand. And then she remembered those times with Richard, walking along the clifftops, and how sometimes – often – in her head he would kiss her: the sensation of him doing this was something she’d imagined so many times it was almost familiar. And beneath the thoughts of Richard, a more painful idea tugged at her: that, despite her red lipstick and her engraved cigarette cases and clever quips, she was small and pathetic and hungry in a way that would always frighten men, always make them leave.

  She stopped running – body doubled over, her panting breath echoing back to her from the sand like a sob – and made her way to college via the newsagents to buy some cigarettes. Two packs of twenty because she had the feeling it was going to be one of those days. She had smoked the first pack by four, in between bouts in the library where the words danced in front of her eyes without going in.

  Would it hurt Ruth at all if she slept with George? Kat thinks as she takes another glass of champagne, eyeing him across the room; though, truth be told, she is more interested in Dan. With his dark hair, he’s a similar type physically to Richard – though he is less scruffy, more at home in black tie, and his face doesn’t have Richard’s kindness. That could be exciting, though. Now, which one should she pick?

  After the disastrous run, the failed trip to the library, Kat thought she’d face her demons – it couldn’t be so bad close up: it was only Ruth, only Richard. She’d changed – clothes always mattered to Kat – into a virginal white shirt dress and gone over to Ruth’s room to chat, but her plan, once she’d got to the door, was interrupted by the unmistakable noises of sex. The rhythmic banging of furniture and panting breath made her turn away, but not before a moment or two of wallowing in the exquisite agony of it, like a paper cut across her heart.

  Later, Ruth, flush-cheeked, dressed in old jeans and a jumper, came to find her. She asked if Kat wanted to go for a drink, trying to ‘keep things normal’, as they both kept repeating, to show ‘nothing had changed’. Kat had kept her earlier visit to herself, but she dismissed Ruth with frosty politeness.

  A couple of boys from her course come over to chat as she sips her champagne trying to catch Dan’s eye again, but Kat isn’t really interested in what they’re saying. One of them has asked her out for a drink several times but she keeps fobbing him off. He’s too young-looking, too keen. She and Ruth had both taken a year off between school and university – and Kat found you usually could tell who’d done that. There was something fresh and newly hatched about the ones who hadn’t. During her gap year, Kat had gone to Paris to stay with her father, but not long after she arrived he explained he had to move on again. A new opportunity had come up in Brazil, though Kat suspected this particular opportunity came in the shape of a leggy new bit on the side.

  She stayed in his flat until the lease ran out a couple of months later, sporadically attending a language school and picking up men. That had been her sexual awakening, really. She had lost her virginity years before at school, but living with her mum in the flat in London there had never quite been the opportunities that there were in Paris. And she was a sucker for those dark eyes and the sort of diffidence mixed with assurance Frenchmen had. Not like this young one chatting to her now.

  She pats him dismissively on the shoulder. ‘Let’s see,’ she says in reply to his question about a drink. ‘I’ve got a ton of work on,’ she adds languidly and moves off, making her way to Dan: she has her eye on her prey tonight.

  As they file into the dining room for supper, she picks a hair off his jacket. ‘Blonde,’ she says, holding it up to the light.

  He shrugs. ‘Not one of mine.’

  ‘You like blondes, do you?’ Kat touches her hair, fair at the moment.

  ‘I like lots of different things,’ he grins as they file in.

  ‘I’ll remember that,’ laughs Kat.

  She takes a seat at the dining table next to Dan, opposite George. The room is candlelit, the crystal glasses catching the light, reflecting it.

  ‘You’re looking good tonight,’ murmurs Dan as he takes his chair. His breath is hot on her neck.

  ‘Don’t I always look good?’ Kat isn’t going to make it too easy. She’s going to make him work for her.

  He toys with a fork. ‘Just particularly edible tonight.’

  ‘Maybe later I’ll let you eat me.’ Which is bold, even for her.

  ‘Promises, promises,’ he laughs, filling up her wine glass.

  Someone starts playing the penny game, where every time someone drops a coin into your drink you have to down it. George and Dan gang up on Kat, working together to distract her and slip the coin into her glass. And she, glad of the excuse, gulps the wine down. It’s only after getting up for the loo halfway through the meal that time starts to expand and contract. One moment she is sitting on the loo seat talking drunkenly about Richard to some girl she’s never spoken to before. Then she’s noticing her cheeks flushed in the bathroom mirror, trying to put on make-up to cover
them. Then there’s a pudding in front of her, which she can’t face eating – a pavlova with the raspberries dyeing the cream pink. Someone says, ‘Don’t you want that?’ and takes it from her. Then one of the tutors is making a speech and Dan is stroking her thigh under the table, pushing her dress up inch by inch.

  Then they’re in one of her favourite late-night drinking spots, a Moroccan-themed nightclub, but she can’t remember how they got there. They’re sitting huddled together, a small group of them. There’s just one other girl and she’s with her boyfriend, so Kat is getting a lot of attention, just how she likes it. George keeps buying bottles of champagne, filling up their glasses, being particularly attentive to her. And she’s up on her feet dancing to the jazz band on her own, moving her hips to the music. Feeling the men’s eyes on her, she knows she is desired and invincible.

  She’s never felt accepted by this crew before and she realises maybe Ruth was the problem all along: Ruth was holding her back.

  ‘Ruth Walker is a bitch, isn’t she?’ she says to George at one stage.

  He makes a crazy sign, twirling a finger around his ear. ‘Nutty as a fruitcake.’

  And then George follows her to the loo and tries to kiss her, but she doesn’t want to kiss him, she realises. She’s made her decision: she’s going to bed with Dan, though she doesn’t tell George this. And George says: does she want to do a line of coke? So they do that instead.

  When George goes to buy the next round, the other girl – Kat can’t remember her name – leans over and says, ‘Be careful tonight.’

  Kat rolls her eyes. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You just seem like you’ve had a lot to drink.’ The girl shrugs. ‘And George and Dan can be trouble.’

  Kat lights a cigarette. ‘Maybe I like trouble.’

  She can’t recall how the conversation develops from this into a quarrel, but the next thing she knows she has called the girl a ‘boring bitch’ and she can’t remember why. The girl is huffily asking her boyfriend if they can leave, and they gather coats and bags and bustle out of the club.