by Jean Ure
“They treat me like a child.”
“Is all right,” said Alex. “I understand. They want keep you safe.” And then he said, “You ask if OK Saturday you come with us have meal somewhere? Me, you, Marek, Marta? Marta want meet you.” He grinned. “I tell her bout you. I say you very sweet girl, very pretty. Beautiful eyes.”
I melted when he said that. I’m not pretty, but I have always been proud of my eyes. They are definitely my best feature.
“Like sea,” said Alex. “Marta she nice girl. She and Marek, they an item.” He folded his arms round me. “I want be an item with you, Tamsin! You want be an item with me?”
I nodded ecstatically, not trusting myself to speak.
“Then that it,” said Alex. “We an item…you, me. Together! Right?”
I said, “Right!”
“So you ask your mum if OK Saturday, OK?”
Recklessly, I told him that I didn’t need to. “It’ll be fine!”
“We’re going bowling,” I told Beth, next day at school. “Then afterwards we’re going somewhere for a meal.”
I waited anxiously for her approval. She nodded. “Cool!”
“Have you ever been bowling?”
“Yeah, it’s fun.”
“But is it difficult?” I’m not very good at sports. I desperately didn’t want to seem silly and babyish.
Beth said, “Don’t worry, you’ll get the hang of it. Not like it really matters, anyway.”
“How d’you mean?” I stared at her doubtfully.
“Well, come on!” She gave me a little knowing nudge in the ribs. “Who cares?”
“Thing is…I have this problem!” The words came bleating out of me. I felt I could confess to Beth and that she would understand.
“What’s that?” she said.
“I haven’t told my parents!”
“About what?”
“About going out with Alex.”
“Oh.” She looked at me, with sudden interest. “Wouldn’t they approve?”
I said, “You know what parents are like.”
“I know what my mum’s like,” said Beth. “Too busy going out with her own boyfriends to check who I go out with. Shouldn’t have thought yours’d be the sort to get fussed.”
It is true that Mum and Dad are quite free and easy compared to, say, Katie’s mum and dad, who have these really rigid rules about television, for instance, and the internet. We don’t have any form of censorship in our house; Mum and Dad don’t believe in it. So long as we talk. But I wasn’t talking! I was deliberately deceiving them. But I knew, deep inside me, that talking wouldn’t make any difference. They still wouldn’t be happy about me going out with Alex.
I said this to Beth, who shook her head wonderingly. She said, “What’s to object to?”
I said, “Just about everything.” The fact that Alex was sixteen, the fact that I hadn’t told them. The fact that he’d smiled at me when he was working on the buildings. The fact that I’d smiled back…I heaved a sigh. “I don’t know what to do! If I tell them, they’ll want to meet him.”
“So?”
“So then he’d discover how old I was!”
“You mean—” Beth’s eyes lit up. “He doesn’t know?”
Miserably I shuffled my feet. “He thinks I’m nearly sixteen.”
“Cool!” She laughed. “It’s not like everyone could get away with it. Not that you behave like you’re nearly sixteen…but looks-wise you might just pass. Just about.”
I knew she meant it as a compliment, and that I ought to feel flattered. “But what do I do about Saturday?” I wailed. “What am I going to tell them?”
“What d’you usually tell them?”
“I usually say I’m going round to Katie’s, but then they expect me to be back by half past eight.”
“Half past eight?”
“Well, or if I’m going to be later they want to come and pick me up.”
“Ah. Mm. I see.” Beth crinkled her forehead. “I see the problem.”
“I can’t tell Alex I’ve got to be back by half past eight! Not if we’re going for a meal.”
“No, you can’t,” said Beth. “Not if you’re supposed to be nearly sixteen. That’d be ridiculous! You could always say you’re spending the night at Katie’s, then go back and stay with Alex instead. Go home in the morning…they wouldn’t know!”
They wouldn’t. But…“Stay with Alex?” I said.
“Why not?” She cackled happily. “You’re nearly sixteen!”
I kept thinking about what Beth had said. Stay with Alex…well, and why not? It was the perfect solution. That way I wouldn’t need to be a silly little baby and start bleating about having to go home. Nobody who was nearly sixteen had to be home by eight thirty on a Saturday night! It was pathetic. I would be far too ashamed.
I knew where Alex lived. He and Marek shared a room in one of the old crumbling houses out near Western Way, the other side of town. He’d never let me visit as he said it wasn’t nice.
“Marek, he very untidy…very dirty person.”
But if I told him Mum and Dad had to be up really early for work, and wouldn’t thank me for thumping about the house at eleven o’clock at night…it wasn’t a total lie! Sometimes when they’re filming they do have to be up at the crack of dawn.
“It would just make it easier.” That was what I would say.
To my surprise, Alex was quite shocked. He said he couldn’t possibly let me stay with him, it wasn’t right.
“If it’s because of Marek,” I said, “I don’t mind untidiness!”
Frankly, I live in a house that is full of mess and clutter. Stuff all over the place. I am the only one in the family who likes a bit of order, the rest are just litter bugs.
I said this to Alex, but he wouldn’t budge. I had never known him be so stubborn before. Usually I could get him to do whatever I wanted. Very firmly he said that he would take me home at the end of the evening and I would let myself in at the front door “very quiet like a leetle mouse” and go on “toe tip” up the stairs, not to disturb Mum and Dad.
Sadly, but a bit proudly as well, I reported back to Beth. “He doesn’t think it would be right.”
“What is this guy?” said Beth. “Your father or your boyfriend?”
I said, “He’s my boyfriend, and he loves me!”
I thought for a minute she was going to make some kind of jeering retort, but after a pause she said, “Well, think yourself lucky! I wouldn’t mind a boyfriend like that.”
Eagerly I said, “Anyway, it’s all right cos I know what I’m going to do…I’ve got a plan!”
“Good for you,” said Beth. “Hope it works out OK.”
It would! It was foolproof; there was nothing that could go wrong.
Ten-pin bowling turned out to be fun even though, as I had suspected, I wasn’t very good at it. I’d seen it so often in movies and it always looked so easy. A huge great ball…how could you possibly miss? Still, I wasn’t the only one; Marek’s girlfriend Marta wasn’t all that much better. She kept crouching down really low and waggling her bum in the air like she knew what she was doing, but she hardly knocked down any more pins than I did. Not, as Beth had said, that it mattered. I think secretly the two boys enjoyed us being so useless as it meant they could show off. I was glad that Alex was good at it. I know it is very pathetically unfeminist of me, but I would far rather he was good and I was bad than the other way round.
Every now and again Marek and Marta would break off to kiss, so me and Alex did too. Marek kept teasing us, which I didn’t really mind though I didn’t see what right he had considering he was doing exactly the same thing. Marta went, “Tweet tweet! Little lovebirds!” and I didn’t see what right she had either. To be honest, I wasn’t too sure about Marta. She had yellow hair and black eyebrows, and she was wearing these really tight, bright pink Lycra leggings and a green top with bobbles on it, which I wouldn’t have been seen dead in.
I know you shouldn�
�t judge people by appearances but sometimes, I reckon, what you wear is what you are. I mean, we all choose our clothes to suit our personality. Marta was a quite loud, bossy sort of person, whereas I am just the opposite. I never choose stuff that will draw attention to me.
Still, if I thought Marta looked tacky she probably thought I looked boring, just wearing jeans and a T-shirt. She certainly treated me like I was boring. She was the only one who could speak proper English, but she hardly talked to me at all, just jabbered all the time in Polish, saying things that made Marek laugh. I had this feeling that it was me they were laughing about. Alex kept squeezing my hand as if to reassure me, and telling Marta to speak English.
We went upstairs afterwards for a meal. It was all American, so I had a hamburger and a milk-shake. The others drank lager, which Marta insisted that I try. I had one sip, and they all laughed as I pulled a face.
Marta made another of her remarks, and Marek grinned. Alex said, “English! Speak English!”
Marta said, “No, let’s teach Tamsin how to speak Polish. What shall we teach her? What will be of use to her? I know, I know! Tamsin, say to Alex…koham chyeh.”
Well, that’s what it sounded like. I repeated it obediently. “Koham chyeh.”
Marta clapped her hands. “Good! And now you say…ko-ash niyeh?”
I hesitated. “What does it mean?”
“Just say it, say it! Ko-ash niyeh?”
I could feel my face starting to go tomato. I was sure she was making fun of me.
“No, is all right.” Alex nodded gravely. “You say!”
Reluctantly, I mumbled it: “Ko-ash nvyeh?”
Alex said, “Koham chyeh!” and pulled me to him.
Then they told me what it meant. Marta wrote down the words for me:
Kochasz mnie? Do you love me?
Kocham çie, I love you
“Is the language of love,” said Marek.
Very useful.” Marek winked. “You learn!”
I am actually quite good at languages, especially French and Spanish, but Polish looked to me to be really difficult. I said, “What does this do?”, pointing to the little symbol under the c of çie. “We don’t have it in English. They have it in French. What’s it called in Polish?”
They all looked at me blankly. “Does anyone care?” said Marta.
She obviously thought me some nerdy stuck-up geek. Why couldn’t I have just kept my stupid mouth shut? Alex, tightening his arm round me, said, “She very clever girl. She know these things.” But who wanted to be clever? In future, I was definitely going to think before I spoke.
On the way home Alex told me that Marta didn’t believe I was nearly sixteen. “She say you look too young!” He laughed. “I tell her, she just jealous!”
I laughed too, but hoped it was the last time we would have to go out as a foursome.
It was eleven o’clock when we reached home. Alex was worried in case I was out later than I should have been, but I told him there was no problem: “I’m nearly sixteen!”
He reminded me to go on “toe tip” so as not to wake my parents. Then he kissed me and whispered, “I love you, Tamsin!”
I whispered back, “Kocham çie!”
He waited till I was at the front door, then blew me a last kiss and walked off, into the night. I knew the chain would be on the door and that there was no point trying my key in the lock. But I wasn’t worried: I had it all worked out. Everything under control.
I pressed my finger on the bell—and that was when it all blew up in my face.
CHAPTER SIX
Almost before I had time to take my finger off the bell, the door was wrenched open and Mum was standing there, her face all scrunched and furious. I was somewhat taken aback but I wasn’t worried; I had my story all worked out. Every detail. I’d been over and over it.
“Where have you been?” Mum hissed it at me. She grabbed hold of my arm and yanked me inside. Dad had appeared, at the end of the hall.
He shouted, “Tamsin, is that you?” He sounded pretty angry. What was going on?
“Get in there!” Now it was Dad who was grabbing me. He hauled me down the hall and thrust me into the sitting room. Mum bundled after us. She closed the door and leaned against it, arms folded.
She said, “Well?”
I kept my cool; I gave them the story. “I’ve been at Katie’s! I told you…I thought I was staying over, but her auntie and uncle were there so I couldn’t, so her dad brought me home. He just dropped me off at the corner.”
There was a silence. It sounded kind of…ominous.
Mum looked at Dad, Dad looked at Mum. It was like they were waiting to see which of them was going to be the first to say something. Growing desperate, I jumped in with both feet.
“I’m sorry, I should have rung you!”
There. Now I had apologised, and that should have been that. But it wasn’t. Dad headed me off, as I made for the door. “Oh, no, you don’t, young woman! You come back here.”
“Look, I’m sorry,” I said. “But I knew you wouldn’t be worried. You knew where I was, so—”
“We rang Katie,” said Mum.
What?
“I wanted to remind you…we need to leave early tomorrow.”
Icy fingers clutched my heart.
“Tim and Megan?” said Mum. In this distinctly cold, unfriendly tone of voice. “We’re all going over there for lunch?”
The icy fingers squeezed and palped. I swallowed a ping pong ball that was lodged in my throat. I’d forgotten about lunch.
“I spoke to Katie…she said you weren’t there…” Mum paused obviously waiting for some kind of an explanation. But I didn’t have one.
“She said you hadn’t even made any arrangements to be there.”
Katie could have lied. It wouldn’t have hurt her. She could have said…something. I would have done. We were supposed to be friends!
“Tamsin, where have you been?” said Dad.
“More to the point,” said Mum, “who have you been with?”
I froze; blood, bones, tongue, everything. It was like my whole body had turned into this big block of ice.
“Katie said you’d been seeing some Polish boy?”
She’d told them! She’d actually told them!
“Some Polish boy from a building site?”
I tried to think of something to say, but nothing came. Even if it had, I couldn’t have said it. My tongue was a solid wodge that wouldn’t move.
“Ellie says she’s seen you talking to one of the boys up the road…the big house they’ve been turning into flats. She says you seemed quite friendly with one of them.” Spying little toad. “Is he the one you were with?”
My heart hammered and pounded.
“Well?” said Dad. “Is he?”
Slowly and reluctantly, I nodded.
“So why for God’s sake didn’t you tell us? What’s with all this creeping around behind our backs? Are we ogres? Are we unreasonable? Or is it because you knew full well you shouldn’t be going out with him?”
My tongue suddenly sprang back to life. “Why shouldn’t I be going out with him?”
“I don’t know,” said Dad. “You tell me.”
“I can’t, there isn’t any reason!” I hurled it at them. “Just that you’re so snobby!”
“I beg your pardon?” said Mum.
“Snobby. You are! You’ve just proved it…boy from a building site! Or maybe you’d like him to go and sign on, like an out-of-work actor!”
Dad ignored that crack. He said, “Stop being on the defensive, it just makes you seem all the more guilty. How old is this boy?”
“I don’t know! Fifteen.”
“Fifteen?” Mum looked at me, rather hard. “Ellie says more like twenty.”
“He’s nowhere near twenty!”
“But he’s not fifteen, is he?”
“How would she know?”
“Tamsin, tell me the truth! How old is he?”
Sullenly I
muttered, “Seventeen.”
“I see.” Mum breathed deeply. “Seventeen! So why did you feel the need to lie?”
“Cos I knew you’d get stupid about it!”
“Does he know how old you are?” said Dad.
“Yes! No.”
“Which?”
“He doesn’t know!” That at least was true. “We haven’t talked about it.”
“I find that hard to believe,” said Dad.
“Well, we haven’t! We don’t talk about stupid things like how old we are. How old we are doesn’t matter!”
“I’m sorry,” said Dad, “but I’m afraid it does. Seventeen is far too old for someone your age.”
Dad had some nerve! He is fourteen years older than Mum. Talk about double standards.
I said, “Why are you so hung up about age?”
“We’re not hung up,” said Mum. “Your dad’s right. And I think in your heart of hearts you know it, otherwise why have you kept it from us?”
“Because I knew you’d be all snobby and make a fuss!”
“Now, you listen here, my girl.” Dad pointed a finger in my face. “What we’re making a fuss about is you going behind our backs and downright lying to us. Not to mention scaring the hell out of us! How do you think your mum and I felt when we discovered at half past nine at night that you weren’t where you were supposed to be?”
“We’ve been having all kinds of nightmares,” said Mum.
I said, “Well, I’m sorry, but you always treat us differently!”
There was a pause; then Mum said, “What are you talking about? Treat who differently?”
“Me and Ellie. You don’t mind her having a boyfriend!”
“For heaven’s sake, Tamsin, have a bit of sense! Obi’s only ten years old.”