I Think I Love You

by Allison Pearson

  What I did urgently need to worry about was Sharon. Her joyful conviction that we were going to win the quiz and would soon be hanging out with David on the set of The Partridge Family was a daily torment. I kept hoping an opportunity would crop up where I could drop into the conversation what had happened the other night at Gillian’s. The way she had tricked me into saying that she could be the named friend on my quiz entry. Sometimes, for whole minutes at a time, I managed not to think about what I had done. I kept busy. I worried my mother by tidying my room. I practiced the Bach suites until my shoulders ached and my fingertips were as red and swollen as raspberries. I ran down the hill to the front: the sea air could always be guaranteed to blow away bad thoughts, which it did for a while. Then, the next time I saw Sharon in her pink crossover ballet cardy, hugging herself with anticipation, I felt my stomach go down a mine shaft.

  “Hey, Pet, you can have my other David scarf for the concert if you want. We can wave them at him. He’s gonna see us and say, ‘Hey, man, who are those two fabulous-looking Welsh girls? Bring ’em backstage to meet me.’ ”

  Sharon’s trusting good nature caused me far more misery than Gillian’s casual cruelty. Self-inflicted wounds are the most painful, as I was learning, because, along with the pain, you have to bear the blame.

  When would be the best time to reveal to your best friend that you have told another girl that she can take half the credit for the special project you’ve been working on together?

  Never. That would be the best time.

  “Can’t bear to think how this will turn out,” I wrote in my diary. “The only person in the world I trust enough to tell what I’ve done is Sharon, and I can’t tell Sharon because it’s her that I’ve hurt, only she doesn’t know it yet.”

  Some memories can still make you twitch with embarrassment years later, but I didn’t need the passage of time to make me tingle with shame over betraying Sharon. I felt it already that night before we set off for White City, sitting on the bed in the ointment-pink room, as my best friend went through her things to help fill the gaps in my meager possessions. Gillian had always been a main topic of conversation for us. Her every movement was endlessly fascinating. But gossiping about Gillian with Sharon wasn’t a pleasure anymore because, when it came to knowledge about Gillian, Sharon and I were no longer equals.

  That same night, Sha’s brother Michael, who was in Stuart Morris’s year at school, burst in through the bedroom door and told us that Stuart had been two-timing Gillian with Debbie Guest. Gillian had found out, but Stuart had dumped her before she could dump him.

  Any satisfaction I might have taken in Gillian’s humiliation was canceled out by the feeling that I, like Stuart, was guilty of infidelity. I had two-timed Sharon with Gillian.

  Often, when I went round to Sha’s house, Mrs. Lewis would let us take crackers and cheese upstairs and we would sing crumby versions of David’s songs, scattering bits over the carpet. That night, side by side on the bed, we worked through all our favorites, in preparation for the next day. Sharon took the tune on “Cherish” while I harmonized around her.

  “And I do-oooo. I cherish youu-ooo.” I broke down at that part. I was still only thirteen years old, yet I felt as though I carried inside me the heartache belonging to someone who had lived much longer.

  “Hey, Pet, what you crying for? Don’t cry, bach,” Sharon said, stroking my hair. “We’re gonna see him tomorrow, mun. We’re gonna see David.”

  Things happened so fast that day. Too fast. Maybe if we’d had more time they wouldn’t have turned out as they did.

  We had agreed that Michael would drive Sharon, me, Gillian and Olga to the station, which was at the far end of the high street. When I turned up at the Lewises’, I changed quickly out of the Laura Ashley sprigged pinafore dress and white blouse, the clothes my mother believed I was wearing to the choral concert in Cardiff. Leaving them in a neat pile on the bed, I got into my outfit to meet David, which I had hidden in Sharon’s drawer the night before. Brown tabard worn over cream pointy-collared shirt, cinched in at the waist with my leather belt from Brownies—it looked pretty good, I thought—brown long socks and the whole outfit set off by my new platform shoes. Judas platforms. The ones Gillian had given me. Then, over the top of everything, I wore a brown bomber jacket, with a David badge and the white silky scarf Sharon had donated with david in huge block letters. When I was ready, I went down to the lounge to say hello to Sharon’s mum and a familiar figure was sprawled on the mustard Dralon settee. He leaped to his feet. Steven Williams.

  It was too much to take in. This was my day with David. The collision of the two boys I liked felt like back-to-back Christmases. Steven said that he and Michael were going to play in a match in Bridgend, so he was hoping to cadge a lift.

  “Room for a small one?” he said with the sheepish grin I recognized from the afternoon he scored the magic try.

  Michael Lewis’s Mini Cooper was near the ground, even before the four of us got in. Sharon, Steven and I squeezed in the back. I was going to let Sha go in the middle, but she deliberately jumped in first so I was next to Steven, which was okay, but there was no need for her to wink really slowly at me so Steven and Michael saw it and laughed.

  On the way to the station, we called for Olga. Carol was getting a lift on her dad’s motorbike and Angela said she would meet us at the ticket barrier. Olga got in the back so there would be room for Gillian up front. Sharon was flattened against one window, Olga was curled up in the middle. When Olga got in, Steven had lifted me across, without any fuss or strain, onto his lap and I stayed perched there in a state of delicious terror, trying to keep my padded crotch an inch or two above his jeans, where I thought I detected a commotion. At least I was facing forward, so Steven couldn’t see me blushing.

  By the time we pulled through the stone pillars into Gillian’s gravel drive, everyone was laughing in a slightly unhinged way. The laughter only got worse when Gillian came out of her house, wearing a ruffled chiffon blouse over immaculate white trousers, and peered inside the little car.

  “How many David Cassidy fans can you get in one Mini?” shrieked Sharon by way of welcome.

  Gillian didn’t answer. I thought of offering to get out, but it would have taken ages and I was starting to relax into my position on Steven’s lap. The limited space had forced his left arm around my shoulder and I didn’t want to lose the novel sensation of being protected, not yet. So Gillian had to sit in the front by herself, well, apart from Michael, who was driving. At the sight of Gillian, Michael had gone slack-jawed; he sat there beaming like Goofy, only a lot less intelligent. Gillian, by contrast, took one look at Michael, with his matted ginger hair and his clashing red spots, and sank into a deafening silence. Struggling to make myself heard above the car’s straining engine, I addressed friendly remarks to the back of Gillian’s bouffy, blow-dried head—I knew she would still be smarting from Stuart’s rejection—but I got no response.

  Gillian’s moods were like the weather; they could instantly make everyone around her cold or hot. Not that morning. Our shared happiness at going to see David was stronger than her disapproval.

  Arriving at the station, we got out and uncurled our limbs. “See you, lovely,” Steven said, and Gillian turned to accept the customary tribute. But it was my cheek he put his hand to and touched. “See you then, yeah.” It was a statement of intent, not a question. Gillian clattered off down the steps and I scurried to catch her up.

  “No rush, Petra, hold your horses,” Sharon called after me.

  Inside the station, Olga handed out everyone’s tickets. We were in that mood where you feel like you’ve got a balloon inflating in your heart. Everything seemed hysterically funny. A fat pigeon got a big laugh, so did a porter with luggage piled on a barrow.

  “Where are you young ladies off to, then?” he shouted as all six of us belted across the iron bridge, even though there was plenty of time till the train got in. On the platform, we bought crisps and cho
colate and pop from the kiosk. Olga said she had a flask of tea with milk, which set us off howling with laughter again. That was Olga for you. When the loudspeaker crackled into life and announced the next train was for London Paddington, honest to God, we cheered like it was the end of the war.

  Gillian was over by the waiting room talking to Carol. They glanced across at me and, for a second, I had that feeling my mamgu called someone walking across your grave. What did the saying mean? For me on that platform, it meant the ghost of a feeling that I was about to die painfully in some as yet unspecified way. The balloon in my heart popped, leaving me winded. As the train pulled in, a bellowing dark blue liveried monster of a train, Gillian shouted across and asked if I could bring the Etam carrier bag she’d left in the waiting room. With that, she disappeared into the carriage.

  Why couldn’t she fetch it herself? I didn’t dare argue. Perhaps if I did what she wanted, now the day could still go well.

  All right, take a deep breath, move purposefully toward the waiting room, don’t give away how panicky you are. Notice that the waiting room is almost full, look under the tables and chairs, ask a mother to please move the stroller her toddler is sleeping in. Trying to control the tears in your voice, ask adults if they’ve seen an Etam carrier bag. Be aware that, outside, the guard on the platform has started to slam the train doors. Just when you’re thinking that Gillian lied to you, find the Etam carrier bag over by the window, snatch it up and run out of the waiting room toward the train, which has just one door left open and—thank you, God—that door is directly in front of you. Jump in just as the guard’s whistle blows and the door shuts with a kerchunk behind you. Clutch the precious Etam bag to your pounding heart and realize that it is strangely light. Glancing in you see the contents—an empty chocolate wrapper, a hair band and three photo envelopes for sending away films to be developed free of charge. You see also, quite clearly now, what lies ahead of you when you go to take your seat.

  It took me several minutes to find them. The train seemed as long as a walk to the gallows.

  They were in the farthest second-class carriage. My friends’ heads were all bowed, as though they were at prayer. Only Gillian looked up. “Oh, Petra, I was just telling Sharon that you entered me and you for the David Cassidy quiz.”

  “That’s not true,” I said.

  Sharon, who was sitting in the window seat next to Gillian, wouldn’t look at me, but I could tell that she’d been crying. She’d put mascara on for the very first time before we left the house—spitting onto the little black tray first and rubbing the brush along it, like we’d seen the older girls do in the school toilets. Sha’s mascara had run and the smudges on her cheeks made her look like a baby who’s been playing with coal.

  “Well, you said you would enter me,” insisted Gillian, as though no blame in that shabby deal could possibly attach to her.

  “Well, I didn’t.”

  “Then you’re a liar as well as a bitch, aren’t you?” she concluded triumphantly.

  Gillian was sitting around a table for four with Sharon and Angela and Olga. Carol was by herself at the table across the aisle. I felt like running away; none of them wanted me here, but they were all I had, my only friends. I put the bag down on Carol’s table and sat in the seat opposite her. Her eyebrows were thickly drawn in with brown pencil; her nostrils flared slightly. She looked ugly and frightening.

  “Petra’s going to play a concert for Princess Margaret on her cello,” announced Gillian brightly, as if she were the deputy head reading out a notice in assembly.

  “What’s it like spreading your legs wide and having something so big between them?” snorted Carol. “Not that you’d know about that, Petra.”

  Everyone laughed except Sharon, who seemed to have shrunk to half her size and was busily tugging the fringe on her new sweater coat.

  “Sharon, I entered us for the quiz, I did,” I said. It was too late now, I knew, but I wanted her to hear me say it.

  She shook her head and turned and looked out the window, where our valleys and our hills were fast disappearing in a heartbreaking smear of green. Soon we would be in England.

  You chose the kind of friends you wanted because you hoped you could be like them and not like you. To improve your image, you made yourself more stupid and less kind. As the months passed, the trade-off for belonging started to feel too great. The shutting down of some vital part of yourself, just so you could be included on a shopping trip into town, not have to sit on your own at lunch or have someone to walk home with. Now among friends, you were often lonelier than you had been before. The hierarchy of girls was so much more brutal than that of boys. The boys battled for supremacy out on the pitch and, after, they showered away the harm. The girls played dirtier. For girls, it was never just a game.

  10

  7:50 p.m. He felt like Gulliver. Around him swarmed the little people. Most came up to his chest. Others came up to his waist. Some he couldn’t see at all, could make them out only by the pressure of their jostling as they flowed past, by their cries and smothered squeals. What had the Lilliputians done to Gulliver? Tied the big man down by his hair, that was it, pegged it to the ground and thrown tiny ropes over his giant limbs. The likelihood of that happening today, Bill thought, was growing by the minute. He had come here for work, and a laugh; now, he saw, it was more a question of getting out alive.

  And, needless to say, he was the only male. This Lilliput was a female community, in which men, with one exception, were neither welcome nor required. Far away, Bill had seen, or believed he had seen, the bald, bespectacled head of a St. John Ambulance man, who seemed to have lost his cap, his cool and his bearings all at once; but even he had vanished into the throng, perhaps for good. Poor bloke. Most days he gathered up riders with cracked collarbones at point-to-points, or poured fresh water down the throats of cross-country runners; nothing in his experience, or his gentle faith, could have prepared him for thirty-five thousand teenaged girls, raging like bees in the hive of White City on a Sunday night. Christ, the din.

  Bill had made a mistake, and he was paying for it already. “Get down there among the little girlies,” Roy had said, rubbing his hands unpleasantly. “You know, get there early, pack a meal, take a tent, lots of fresh water, pith helmet. Dig yourself in and ask them what they’re doing there.”

  “They’re coming to see their favorite pop star,” Bill had replied, nonplussed.

  “I know that, wanker. But go and ask them to their little faces, see what nonsense they come out with. Take one of them machines to measure sound, what’s it called? Dumb-bell level?”

  “Decibels.”

  “That’s the one. See if you can get a reading on their screams. We could run a little bar chart, give a prize to the loudest, that sort of malarkey. Howlin’ Hannah from Harpenden. Sharon the Shouty.”

  “But I thought there was a press enclosure.”

  “There is, if you’re a poof.” Roy had given him the same look he gave anyone who wore a seat belt in a car.

  “But it’s nearer the stage,” Bill had gone on, prolonging an argument that could not be won.

  “So what? So you can see up his purple shorts? Look, matey, we don’t often get a chance to see our readers in the flesh, so for God’s sake go and press it. Have a squeeze and report back to me. Arright?”

  Bill had obeyed, in part. He had gotten hold of a press ticket, after no more than nine phone calls to the promoter’s office. It would mean being penned in, he suspected, like a monkey, behind some sort of cage, although his even stronger suspicion was that the human activity outside would be the most animal of all. The girls would go ape, and he would end up grateful for the iron bars. On the other hand, he would, for a while, do the bidding of his boss; get there well ahead of the show, mix with them as the mood grew, get some quotes, then make his way to the safe haven of his fellow journalists before the main event. The trick was to time it right.

  An elbow caught him under the ribs and knoc
ked the wind out of him. He keeled forward, catching his jaw on the head of the girl in front.

  “Hey,” she said, twisting half round, “watch it, okay?” She had short hair and glasses, and for a second Bill thought, with an odd pang of fellow feeling, that she was a boy. But what would a boy be doing here wearing a David Cassidy scarf?

  “Sorry,” Bill said, or tried to say. He was still fighting to get his breath back, and the word came out as zerr.

  The girl had a friend with her, who giggled. She was round and pink-faced, in a yellow sweater.

  “What you doing here, anyway?”

  “Erm, writing. I’m a writer.”

  “What, like poems?”

  “No, I write for magazines,” Bill said, dropping easily and untruthfully into the plural. The sound of chatter and hum, on every side, was deafening, but the three of them were squashed so tight that they could practically talk straight into one another’s ears. Bill bent his head to their level.

  “D’you do pop?” the round girl asked.

  He coughed, still wheezing slightly. “Um-hum, I cover quite a lot of the music scene, actually. Rock, jazz. A little bit of pop.”

  “D’you do interviews?”

  “Sometimes. If the editor thinks I should.”

  “Is that what you’re doing here, then?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “So why are we the ones asking all the questions?”

  Bill had no answer to that. He saved face, as he often did, by raising the level of his lies.

  “Well, sometimes doing an interview, it isn’t just a matter of Q and A, you know. It’s like, like, a conversation. Like you’d have with a friend …” The girls were screwing up their faces. Only fifteen or so, but they could smell nonsense when it came their way; they could certainly rumble a boy—or, in this case, a grown-up—who was trying too hard.