by David Belbin
“What’s this rubbish?” Mum asked, as she walked back into the house.
Rachel told her.
“I don’t know what the BBC’s coming to,” Mum commented, tartly.
“It’s a serious issue, though,” Rachel said. “You know, should they be allowed to ...”
“Oh, it’s a serious issue all right,” Mum said, “but I don’t want to talk about it now. I want a bath.”
Rachel left the subject, though she didn’t want to. Discussing the programme would have been interesting. Rachel might have been able to work out how Mum would react to her being with Mike. But Mum was on her way upstairs.
“How was your meeting?” Rachel called to her.
“Depressing. I’ll tell you about it later.”
“Tracey not coming over tonight?” Mike asked Phil, as he finished his fish and abandoned the last few chips.
“Nah. Girls’ night out. Fancy going to the Dover Castle later on, playing some pinball?”
“Fine by me.”
The phone rang in the other room. Mike found himself hurrying to answer it. The voice on the other end wasn’t Rachel’s. It was his mother.
They had a desultory conversation. Yes, the job was going fine. No, he hadn’t heard from Emma, didn’t expect to. Yes, he remembered that it was his father’s birthday next week, though why Mum was reminding Mike when she’d divorced Dad three years ago was beyond him. Finally, he was sorry, but he was too busy to visit her over half-term.
“Got plans for half-term?” Phil asked, when he returned to the dining room.
Mike shook his head. “I want to get my lessons properly sorted for next half-term. The play’s going to take up so much time that if I don’t do it now, I never will. Anyway, I’m still totally skint. Are you and Tracey going somewhere?”
Phil shook his head. Mike didn’t know whether or not to be relieved. If Phil went away for a day or two, Mike could have Rachel over. But maybe it would be best for them not to have the opportunity. If things went any further with Rachel, Mike could see himself falling into a hole which he could never crawl out of. He was crazy about Rachel, but the whole thing was too risky. He ought to let her down gently. Yet... The phone rang once more. This time, Phil answered it.
“Dead again. You reckon some kid at school’s got our number and started playing silly beggars?”
“It’s possible,” Mike said. “Maybe you should go ex-directory.”
“Too late for that,” Phil said. “Ready for the pub?”
“Give me five minutes,” Mike said.
He went upstairs for a wash, thinking about Rachel. That was bound to have been her, for the second time today. She’d probably snuck out of the house to a phone box to call him. How could he give her up? Just the thought of being with her excited him, even if it had to be in the back seat of his car. He found himself getting angry with Phil. Why wouldn’t he go away? Next week, during the day, Mike would be able to phone Rachel at home while her mother was at work. But it was too risky to go to her house, no matter how much he wanted to.
Mike went into his room to get some money. He didn’t get paid for a week and he was short. He rifled through three pairs of jeans. Sometimes he stuffed a note into a back pocket. Nothing there. He reached into the breast pocket of the smarter of his two school jackets and pulled out some junk. Unravelling a tissue, he was relieved to find a fiver. There was something else there, too. He turned it over: a beermat. Written on the back of it was Sarah Poole’s phone number.
Sarah would probably be free over half-term. She was nice. He ought to call her. But he knew he wouldn’t. It was pointless. There was no way that Mike could form a relationship with anyone else while his mind was full of Rachel. And there was no way that he should call Rachel, either.
But he knew that he would.
Ten
On the second Sunday afternoon of half-term, Rachel tried to get down to the homework she’d been putting off for the whole holiday. There’d been days when she tried, but couldn’t get anything done, not even a Romeo and Juliet essay for Mike. “Write extracts from Juliet’s diary for the first two acts of the play” was the assignment. Met this great guy at a party, Rachel wrote. I was walking on air until Nursey told me the bad news — he’s a Montague!
It didn’t work. Rachel was trying to write like a naive teenager, but she didn’t feel like a teenager any more. She was a woman, and all she wanted was to spend time with Mike. But it wasn’t easy. Rachel had had no babysitting jobs over half-term and Phil Hansen didn’t go away. She and Mike had only managed two meetings: an hour in the maths teacher’s rather shabby house on Monday, when Phil was shopping, and a hurried coupling in the back of Mike’s car in an empty car park at night, when Rachel was supposed to be at Becky’s.
Rachel wished she could see Mike when she wanted, that they could go dancing together, kiss in public, walk the streets hand in hand. Why shouldn’t they? Rachel had thought about it long and hard: as far as she was concerned, they were doing nothing wrong. The age difference between her and Mike was less than that between Dad and Clarissa. They had more in common than most couples she knew. What they were doing was against the law, true. So were lots of things which shouldn’t be, things which didn’t hurt anybody.
But Rachel did see advantages in the way things were. There was something very exciting about secrecy, about snatched meetings and hurried sex. It was like living your life in a movie which hurtled from scene to scene. Rachel’s life was a series of fast-forward flickering images, cutting from one scene with Mike Steadman to the next. The bits in between didn’t count for anything.
Tomorrow she would be back at school, where she would see Mike every day. In some ways, that was worse. She hated seeing Mike and not being able to touch him. She wanted to talk to him as a lover, not a pupil.
Mum was in the kitchen, cooking. The radio was on. Mum wouldn’t be able to hear the phone. Rachel went down to the hall and dialled Mike’s number. He’d said that Phil would be seeing Tracey today - either this afternoon or evening. Rachel needed to see him. It didn’t matter where or how. He answered the phone with his usual brusque “Hello”.
“Mike, it’s me. Can you talk?”
There was a deathly pause. “Er, this isn’t Mike, it’s Phil. Who is this?”
Rachel choked. Mr Hansen’s voice was deeper than usual. Maybe he had a cold. Rachel nearly put down the phone, but that would drop Mike in it. Instead, she changed her voice slightly.
“It’s Cynthia,” she said, picking the first name which came to mind. “Is Mike there?”
“He’s in the bath,” Phil told her. “Can I get him to call you back?”
“It’s all right,” Rachel replied, slowly affecting a more upper-class voice. “I’ll catch him later.”
She hung up, then slammed her fist several times against the telephone table.
“Who’s Cynthia?”
“Pardon?”
Mike had just got out of the bath and was preparing some lessons at the kitchen table. Phil was having dinner with Tracey’s parents that evening, and Mike was hoping Rachel would call, that he’d be able to pick her up and bring her over.
“A girl called Cynthia rang you up, wouldn’t leave a message.”
Mike considered lying, but he’d never been any good at it. “I don’t know any Cynthias,” he said.
“Me neither,” Phil told him. “At first, she thought I was you. When she found out I wasn’t, her voice seemed to change. Maybe it was a kid from school, messing around.”
“Maybe,” Mike said.
“Although,” Phil went on, “I didn’t know that any of the kids at school knew we shared a house.”
“I haven’t told anyone,” Mike assured him, “but you know how schools are: the most insignificant bits of gossip spread like wildfire.”
Rachel didn’t ring. Mike considered calling her at home, hanging up if her mother answered. He decided against it. Too risky. When he’d finished working, he played some CDs
and read the Sunday papers. He microwaved a Chinese meal from Marks & Spencer’s and drank some red wine with it, the wine he’d bought to share with Rachel. Then he turned on the TV and dozed off.
He was woken by the phone. Mike snapped awake, thinking for a moment that he was late for school. It was ten to eight, he saw. Had he been here all night? Then he realized that it was still evening. He turned off the TV and picked up the phone. It was silent.
“Rachel?” Mike said, softly. “It’s OK. Phil’s gone out.”
“I’m sorry about that,” Rachel told him. “It was just ... he sounded like you and I was so desperate to hear your voice, to see you ... It’s been days.”
“I’m here now,” Mike said, warmly. “Can I come and collect you?”
“I’m in a phone box,” Rachel told him. “I told Mum I needed to borrow a maths book from Carmen. She won’t expect me to be away long.”
“You can call her from here,” Mike said. “Say you’ve decided to stay and do some work with Carmen. You can even borrow one of Phil’s textbooks if you want to make it look convincing.”
“All right,” Rachel said. She told him where she was.
Mike got in the car and sped over there. On a quiet night like this, he could reach Stonywood in eight minutes. Mike’s heart leapt. What pleasure was there which compared with getting something just after you’d given up on it? But it was more than that, Mike realized. He would have to stop fooling himself. All week, he hadn’t been able to get Rachel off his mind. He felt about her in a way he’d never felt for anyone before. Not even Emma.
It was drizzling. Rachel waited in a phone box on the main road, stepping out as Mike’s car pulled up. Ten minutes later, he was pouring her a glass of wine in his bedroom.
“I’ve missed you so much,” Rachel said.
“Me, too,” Mike whispered. “I love you.”
Rachel pulled him to her. This was the first time that either of them had said the words.
“I love you, too,” she told him.
Mike felt something inside himself filling up.
Afterwards, as they lay together in each other’s arms, they talked about the future.
“When I’ve finished school,” Rachel said, “we’ll be able to see each other openly, won’t we?”
“I don’t see why not,” Mike said, “as long as we don’t rub it in people’s faces.”
The future seemed a long way off. He’d spent most of the week trying to think of ways to finish with her, failing.
“Will you get your own place?” Rachel asked.
“Who knows?” Mike said. “Maybe we can get a place together.”
Rachel gave him a long, lingering kiss, leaving him in no doubt how she felt about that idea. “I might need to move out of home,” she said, with anxiety in her voice, “if Mum doesn’t approve of me going out with you. Mum can get ... Oh, God!” There was blind panic in her eyes.
“What?” Mike asked.
“I forgot to ring Mum up! She’ll be worried sick.”
Naked, Rachel ran downstairs to use the phone. Two minutes later she was back, looking chastened.
“She’d rung Carmen half an hour ago. She knew I wasn’t there.”
Mike swore. “What did you tell her?”
“Nothing. I said I’d explain when I got home. I’d better go straight away.”
They dressed hurriedly. Mike didn’t know how to deal with this. One minute they were talking about moving in together, the next he was having to rush Rachel back to her mother’s. It made him feel like a guilty teenager himself.
Mike got on to the ringroad and sped towards Stonywood. Rain poured down.
“What will you tell her?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” Rachel said. “She’ll guess I’ve been seeing a boy - or doing drugs. She worries about that, too.”
“Is there anyone you can say you’ve been with?”
Mike expected her to say Nick, but, instead, Rachel mentioned a boy called Carl.
“Mum doesn’t know where he lives, so she couldn’t check him out. But …”
Suddenly, Mike was aware of a flashing light behind them. He swore repeatedly.
“Not now,” Rachel said. “What will you tell them?”
“There’s nothing to tell them,” Mike said. “I was speeding, that’s all.”
“How old shall I say I am?” Rachel asked, as Mike pulled off the road. “Seventeen, eighteen?”
“They’re not going to ask,” Mike assured her. “I just hope I’m under the limit.” He got out of the car.
“In a hurry, sir?” the policeman asked.
“I’m sorry,” Mike said. “I know I was breaking the speed limit.”
The policeman nodded. “Had you noticed, sir, that it’s raining, and there’s a lot of water on the road?”
“Yes.”
“Would you say that those were circumstances in which it was appropriate to drive faster than the speed limit?”
Mike felt like he was dealing with a particularly pedantic teacher, but he had to humour him, to get it over with as quickly as possible.
“No,” he said.
“Have you been drinking at all, sir?”
“I had a little red wine, but it was a while ago now.” Actually, not expecting to drive, he’d had nearly half a bottle. He might be under the limit, but it would be a close thing.
“Blow into this, please. Harder. That’s it. Keep going.”
From the car, Rachel watched with undisguised concern as the policeman examined the breathalyzer. Mike wondered why she was worried about her age.
“You’re in the clear, sir. Just. I should warn you …”
Mike kept nodding as he got the lecture on drinking and driving, then agreed to take his papers into Radford Road police station within the next few days. By the time he got back into the car they’d been stopped for nearly fifteen minutes. He told Rachel what had happened.
“I don’t know what I’m going to tell Mum,” she said.
They left the ringroad and Mike drove into Stonywood at twenty-eight miles per hour. As they neared Rachel’s street, he asked, “Why were you worried about your age, Rachel? You’re sixteen, aren’t you?”
She was silent. He stopped the car and turned to her. Rachel shook her head. “Not until April.”
Mike groaned. “You look so old. I assumed ...”
Rachel began to cry. Her voice was that of a sulky teenager. “Why does it matter how old I am? I thought you loved me ...”
He pulled her to him, trying to take it all in. “I do love you, I do. It’s just that what we’re doing is against the law. We’ll have to be even more careful now.”
“You’re not going to finish with me?” Rachel said, through her tears.
“I couldn’t if I tried,” Mike told her.
Rachel ran through the rain back to her house. Mike didn’t start the car. He was lost in thought. She’d let him think she was sixteen, he knew that. In Rachel’s position, he’d probably have done the same thing. But she was jail bait. And her birthday wasn’t until after Easter, mere weeks before she went on study leave. If word got round that they’d moved in together - even that they were going out with each other - people were bound to guess that it had been going on since before Easter. They would guess that it happened during the play.
But Mike couldn’t give her up. It didn’t matter how old she was. If Rachel wasn’t a woman yet, she was on the cusp of becoming one - the sort of woman who men would knock down doors to get to. Only he’d got there first.
There was only one thing for it. They would keep the relationship quiet until the end of the school year. Then his contract would be up and he’d get another job. At a new school. No one would have to know that his girlfriend had been in his year-eleven class the year before. That was it. Keep a lid on things for five months and they’d be home and dry. He started the engine.
“And where have you been?”
When telling lies, Rachel had read somewhere,
it was best to stay as close to the truth as possible. That way, you were much less likely to be caught.
“With a boy.”
“Who?” Mum said, sharply.
“No one you know.”
Rachel looked at the ground. She hated this kind of confrontation.
“And what were you doing? How come it took you so long to get home?”
“We were in his car,” Rachel said. “After I rang you, he was rushing me home. I’d have been here half an hour ago, only he got stopped for speeding.”
Mum shook her head. “That’s not the whole story. Have you been taking something?”
“No!”
Mum came closer to her. “Can I smell your breath?”
“What is this,” Rachel complained, “the Gestapo?” Mum leant forward.
“You’ve been drinking.”
“I had a glass of wine.”
“And was he drinking too?”
“They breathalyzed him. He was clear.”
Mum tried to put her arms around her daughter, but Rachel shook her away.
“I thought we could talk to each other about things. Who is this boy? Where did you meet him?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“How old is he? Tell me that at least.”
“Eighteen,” Rachel lied.
“Are you having sex with him?”
Mum was crying, Rachel saw. She was hurting her. But she’d already gone deeper than she’d ever meant to go. All she’d wanted to tell Mum tonight was that she was round at Carmen’s, doing maths. Why did she have to tell her more than that?
“I’m on the pill,” she said. “I’ll have sex when I want to. But it’s private. I don’t ask you about things like that.”
“I’d tell you if you asked me,” Mum said, softly.
“I know what I’m doing,” Rachel insisted.
“I hope so,” Mum said. “I really hope so.”
Eleven
Every Monday before school started there was a staff briefing. The first Monday after half-term, the only spare seats were in a group which included Sarah Poole. Seeing Mike sit down, Sarah turned away. She’d expected him to call her, Mike realized, and felt snubbed.