by Karen Swan
Suddenly, now, Nettie understood the look Pho had given her.
‘The escalators are this way,’ she said, pointing to the opposite direction to the one he was heading towards.
‘No, too dangerous,’ he said firmly, the tension she had glimpsed earlier setting his entire face now in a concrete mask – all life and colour gone. Nettie immediately saw his point. There could be a serious accident if overexcited teenage girls on their way up passed him going down.
‘This way, the changing rooms,’ he said quickly, turning on his heel just as a horde of girls spilled from the lifts on the far side, screaming his name. Nettie froze. She’d never seen anything like it. She couldn’t believe how quickly everything had deteriorated. One minute they’d been joking about, the next they were looking for cover from two hundred hysterical strangers all wanting to touch him, be with him, have their photo taken with him.
What had she done? Goading him about having security, teasing him about being too precious to come out and buy a simple T-shirt. But it hadn’t been a pose; this was his reality. He wasn’t free to move about like a normal person. This was the price he paid for the jet-set lifestyle she had only ever read about in magazines, and it wasn’t a joke. This wasn’t funny.
‘Nettie!’
She turned back at his shout, but he was across the shop floor now – unaware that she hadn’t been behind him – an advancing crowd flooding between them and cutting them off from one another like an incoming tide. She couldn’t barge past these people, who were already shoving each other, and there was no question of him walking into the middle of them. A few more minutes of this and there was going to be a riot.
‘Just go! Get out of here!’ she shouted over, waving her arms in the air to force him back.
‘No!’
‘Yes, I’m fine!’ she shouted. ‘Just go!’
For a moment he stared at her across the crowd, desperation in his eyes that this had happened – that they’d been separated, that he’d been noticed, that he’d so hopelessly failed at being normal – but then a security guard appeared and dragged him away and he was gone, blocked from her sight, and she stood alone and still in the store, just another girl, just another fan.
Chapter Fifteen
‘Hey.’
Nettie looked up from her cross-legged position on the floor to find Dan leaning on his elbows across the counter and grinning down at her. ‘Hey.’
‘I thought you might be here.’
‘And here I am . . .’ she smiled, watching as several snowflakes fell from his hair towards her. ‘Oh! It’s started snowing, then?’ The weather had been forecast to close in this afternoon, but she hadn’t really believed it would after seeing the clear skies at sunrise.
‘No. I just need to wash my hair,’ he said, keeping a straight face until she’d grimaced. She shook her head despairingly and carried on unpacking the books from the box and scanning the ISBN codes.
He watched her for a moment. ‘So what you doing?’
She arched an eyebrow. ‘Registering the new titles.’
‘Need a hand?’
She groaned as she glanced back up at him. ‘Just tell me what it is, Dan. What do you want?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Have you changed your mind on the poncho?’
‘No.’
‘So then, what? You can’t expect me to believe that you’ve just wandered into the library and offered to help out of the goodness of your heart? I don’t think so.’
‘No, I was just wondering what you were up to, is all. You’d already gone out by the time I moseyed over this morning, which is not like you, as we well know.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Your dad said you must have had plans; I didn’t like to point out to him the possibility that you might have got lucky and not come home last night.’
‘It wouldn’t matter if you did. I’m twenty-six,’ she replied tartly.
‘I know, but we all know you pulling an all-nighter is up there with solar eclipses.’ He registered her expression. ‘Sorry.’
She sighed but offered no explanation, instead continuing to scan the books, the pile beside her growing taller and taller.
Dan watched for a moment, before curiosity got the better of his pride. ‘So which was it, then? Out early, or out all night?’
‘Oh, Dan! You are so nosy!’ she said exasperatedly, unwrapping her legs and standing up.
He shrugged, but his big blue eyes wouldn’t shift off her, trying to read her.
‘Look, I was working, all right?’ she said, rolling her eyes.
‘By seven o’clock on a Saturday morning?’ He made a buzzer sound, the kind they used on game shows when a contestant’s answer was wrong. ‘Nope, not buying it. Try again.’
Nettie sighed, knowing exactly what he was thinking – that she’d spent the night with Jamie. She felt her heart constrict again at the memory of last night’s mistake, this morning’s disaster. She glanced at Dan – what he suspected was so far from the truth, and she wasn’t sure she had the energy to explain to him that while he’d been eating his cornflakes, she had been owling as a mutant bunny on top of the O2; that while he and her father had been discussing bikes over their customary Saturday-morning elevenses, she had been in the middle of a stampede on Oxford Street.
‘Believe what you like. That’s the truth.’
Dan cocked an eyebrow and she looked left and right to make sure nobody was standing in earshot. ‘You can see for yourself – Caro should have uploaded it by now . . . Besides, I’m surprised you’re not working today. You said you were flat out.’
‘Boy’s gotta rest,’ he shrugged, flashing her one of his best lazy-boy smiles.
‘Hmm. Excuse me,’ she said primly, raising the hatch and pushing past him with the armful of new books. They had often argued over his lackadaisical work ethic and she knew she wasn’t the only one in the wrong job. Born to a single, working mother, his early years had been spare and hard, a ragamuffin childhood spent in holed jeans and too-small shoes. But his mother was a beautiful woman who knew how to work her wiles, and as she exchanged husbands for alimonies, their circumstances had changed quite drastically. She had even sent him to a private school for a while – two terms, apparently – but Dan had had none of it, being disruptive in class, teaching all the kids swear words and bunking off lessons until eventually he achieved his objective and was ‘asked to leave’. Nettie often joked that he was the only plumber in London who knew Latin accusatives, but there was nothing funny about it; turning his back on his mother’s lavishness and embracing the life he felt he was ‘born to’ was the only way he knew to reject her and the choices she’d made. It was no coincidence that while his mother lived in a £2-million villa in Highgate, he chose to live in a pint-sized houseboat, and he no sooner wanted to be a plumber than Nettie did, but it disappointed his mother’s social ambitions, which was precisely the point.
Dan walked after her, ignoring her disapproval. ‘So when are you finishing here, then?’
‘Why?’ she asked, stacking them on the ‘new releases’ shelf.
‘I just thought we could go for a walk or something. I feel like I’ve hardly seen you this week.’
‘You saw me last night, you fool,’ she scoffed, before her eyes widened with sudden realization. He took a step back as she whirled round.
‘What?’ He held his hands up like she was pointing a gun at him.
‘Has Dad sent you over here?’
‘No!’
‘He has. He has, hasn’t he?’
‘No, I’m telling you.’
She hugged the books to her chest. ‘It’s because of the tree, isn’t it?’
‘No.’
‘I know it is. Just say it.’
Dan exhaled, knowing his cover was blown. ‘Fine. He just wants to be sure you’re all right. When he found you were gone so early this morning . . .’ He shrugged.
She resumed stacking the shelf. ‘I am fine, I promise.
I really was working.’
He watched as she walked back to the front desk, ducking under the hatch.
‘Is that all it is? I mean, I know your job’s off-the-scale mental at the moment but you seem . . . distracted. Stevie thinks so too. Everyone’s worried this is too much on top of—’
‘Dan, please,’ she pleaded. ‘Let it go. I’ve told you I’m fine.’
He held his hands up. ‘All right, all right. You can’t say I didn’t try.’ He kicked the base of the desk lightly with his feet. ‘So when are you knocking off here? I can meet you for a pint if you like?’
‘Not for another hour or so.’
He gurned, before dropping his forehead on the counter. ‘Can’t you skive off a bit earlier?’
She looked up at him from beneath raised eyebrows. ‘You know I can’t. It’s four-hour shifts, and the next volunteer is . . .’ Nettie scanned the rota. ‘Oh, it’s Mary. She definitely won’t get here early.’
‘Fine,’ Dan said, smacking the desk lightly with his palm. ‘Well, then I shall wait for you.’
‘You really don’t have to.’
‘I know.’ He winked as she pulled a sheaf of papers out of a drawer and, ducking back under the hatch, walked over to the community noticeboard by the front doors. Unlocking the glass cover with a key in her pocket, she began taking down the old, expired notices and replacing them with the new ones – mother and baby groups, Pilates classes, guided walks, missing persons flyers, film night, book clubs . . .
‘We could make an evening of it if you want?’ he asked, watching the way she fastidiously checked the leaflets were level and smoothed them of wrinkles before placing a drawing pin in each corner. ‘Got any plans?’
She stalled, thinking of the vast arena that was already gearing up for tonight’s performance – last-minute touches being finalized as the light and sound systems were rigged up, the carpets vacuumed, the bins emptied, the staff clocking on and manning the exits, girls up and down the country already on trains, tickets clutched in their hands, make-up freshly applied . . . She thought of Jamie running through the set on that big stage, or maybe sitting on the so-called ‘rank’ sofa with his tube of Pringles and car magazine. Had she intruded on his thoughts all afternoon, the way he’d intruded on hers? Blink too long and she saw the image of him now scorched on her retina. She’d had to turn the radio off to silence the DJ talking up tonight, playing his songs . . .
Jamie had DM-ed her several times to check she’d got out OK, little understanding that no one had had any interest in her the second she was no longer with him, but her replies had been muted. What had happened this morning had left her rattled. No, more than that, scared. How could he live like that, only safe with a bodyguard in tow, only safe for as long as he wasn’t recognized? And she knew he must never get to go unrecognized; his looks made people stare before they even clocked who he was.
‘Nets?’
‘Huh?’ She realized Dan had asked her something again.
‘If you’ve got plans, it’s cool.’
‘No, no,’ she said quickly. ‘I mean, Jules and I were going to see the new Bond tonight, but I don’t think, now . . .’ Her voice trailed off at the thought of seeing Jamie again, tonight, those things he’d said. She felt at war with herself, her nerves shredded. It would be so easy to go along with it all, allowing herself to be swept up in the glamour and excitement of a fantasy coming true, but hadn’t this morning showed her that real life would always intrude? She couldn’t pretend this was normal, and after this morning, neither could he.
She inhaled sharply, her mind made up. ‘Sounds good.’
He relaxed into a smile. ‘OK to hang at your place? I’m out of coal, so it’s a bit chilly . . .’
She rolled her eyes. ‘It’s fine. Dad’s engrossed in HMS Victory anyway. I don’t think he’s ever going to leave the kitchen again.’ She locked the glass door and pocketed the small key. Dan was standing still, watching her. ‘You OK?’
He blinked. ‘Yeah. Yeah. I’ll see you over there, then,’ he said, pulling the hood up on his puffa and walking backwards towards the door. ‘Toffee vodka, right?’
‘I would kill you,’ she laughed.
‘Don’t I know it,’ he grinned, turning on his heel and ducking his head low as he stepped out into the snow.
The flame flickered weakly in the black arched Victorian fireplace. Theirs was one of the only houses in the square to boast a ‘real’ fire, but the wood her father had last picked up at the service station wasn’t aged and it hissed and spat sparks out onto the orange Boucherouite rug.
Dan had ‘baggsed’ the sofa and was stretched lengthways across the orange velvet chesterfield, his feet dangling over the end and a bowl of crisps resting on his stomach. A fresh pint was positioned in perfect reach of his hand on the floor.
Nettie was huddled in her mother’s favourite chair, hugging a cross-stitched cushion that read, ‘Fall down seven times. Get up eight.’ Her face was pointed in the direction of the telly, but she had yet to notice that Dan had surreptitiously switched it over to the football highlights, his eyes sliding over to her every so often, grateful and incredulous that she hadn’t realized. She was still distracted by Jamie’s last message – the one she hadn’t responded to, checking that she was still coming tonight.
‘Hungry yet?’ Dan asked, trying to get her attention.
‘Hmm? Oh, no . . . Unless you are. I can eat if you want to.’
Dan frowned. ‘I’ve never known you so unbothered by your stomach before. You’re not on another of those bloody diets, are you?’
‘No.’ She realized she had forgotten her fruit-only resolutions earlier in the week, although the combination of terror and lust had seemingly revved up her metabolism, as her jeans felt looser than usual.
The doorbell rang and she waited a moment for her father’s voice to ring out, saying he’d get it. But all was silent from the kitchen and she got up with a puff.
‘Probably Jules,’ Dan murmured as she slipped into the hall.
‘Yep,’ Nettie said, recognizing the slight silhouette through the frosted glass.
‘Hey!’ Jules said in greeting as she opened the door. ‘You need to get a wreath put up on that d—’ Her eyes fell to Nettie’s ‘Saturday night in’ attire – Jack Wills tracky bums, fleecy striped socks and one of her dad’s old jumpers. ‘Seriously? That’s what you’re going in?’
Nettie closed the door to a sliver, frantically shushing her and trying to keep Jules’s voice from carrying throughout the house. ‘I’m not going, I told you.’
Jules barked a sharp laugh. ‘Ha! Right, pull the other one.’ She was looking sensational in second-skin over-dyed black jeans, thigh boots and a coral-pink leather biker jacket. Her smoky eye make-up alone must have taken half an hour.
‘I mean it, Jules.’ Nettie’s voice was a whisper. ‘Dan’s here and we’re just going to have a chilled one.’
‘But . . .’ Jules was gobsmacked. ‘We had plans.’
‘Yes. To go to the cinema. I never said I wanted to go to that concert.’
‘You didn’t have to say it!’ Jules almost shrieked. ‘You were as manic as me trying to buy the freaking tickets six months ago. It went without saying . . . I thought you were joking!’
‘Sssh!’ Nettie hissed desperately, putting the door on the latch and closing it behind her as she came to stand on the step. ‘I just don’t want to, OK? Please don’t make a big deal about it.’
There was a long silence as Jules stared at her in angry disbelief as it dawned that Nettie wasn’t joking. ‘Look, what the hell happened with you two last night? You’re being dodgy as hell. One minute you won’t even look at him, the next you’re huddled in a corner, whispering on your own together, and now you’re being weird again.’
‘Look, I know what I’m doing. It’s for the best, Jules.’
‘Aye, aye,’ Dan’s voice piped up, the door opening wide behind her, ‘what’s going on here, then?’
> ‘Nettie’s bailing on me, that’s what!’ Jules fumed back.
Nettie looked between her two friends pleadingly. ‘Dan and I have got plans, Jules.’
‘We had plans!’
‘Different plans. And they changed, so . . .’
‘Oh, right. So I’m just expected to go on my own, am I? Rock up to the VIP area like Billy No Mates?’
‘Go where?’ Dan asked, baffled.
‘Jamie’s playing at the O2 tonight and he asked us to go, that’s what! Only, Nets is trying to make out she’s got to honour a commitment to watch telly with you instead.’
Dan looked back at Nettie with unusual scrutiny. ‘Why didn’t you say?’
‘Because I just don’t want to go, all right?’ She looked back at Jules. ‘And I’m sure they’ll all be really welcoming and friendly. It’s not like you can talk at these things anyway.’
Jules glared at her. ‘I would never do this to you. I’d never drop you in it, even if I was in your shoes.’
‘I’m sorry, Jules. I just . . . can’t.’
‘That’s it, is it? You can’t?’
‘Hang on, is this about last night? Did something happen?’ Dan asked, straightening up so that he towered over her in the doorway. ‘Did he try it on with you? Did he try and make you do something you—’
‘No! It was nothing like that. Really. I . . .’ Nettie shrugged hopelessly, looking back at Jules. ‘I’ll make it up to you, I promise.’
‘No, you won’t. Everything’s run on your terms. Your story’s so much worse than everyone else’s; no one else’s problems can possibly compete. We just have to get on with it, while you . . . you get the special treatment.’
‘Jules—’ Nettie said, her cheeks stinging like every word was a slap.
‘Forget it,’ Jules said, turning on her heel and storming back down the path, almost going flying on an icy patch. The snow wasn’t settling, but the temperatures were plummeting again.