‘No,’ she said, ‘they don’t freak out. They go a bit silent and distant. They don’t like talking about him, if that’s what you mean.’ She put her hand on top of his. ‘What about your mum?’ she asked, ‘does she freak out if you mention your dad?’
‘No,’ Jay said, ‘she says I can talk about him if I ever need to.’
‘Do you ever need to?’
‘No,’ he said, ‘what’s the point?’ He looked round at her. ‘Do you ever need to talk about your brother?’
‘No,’ Sammie said, meeting his eyes, ‘what’s the point?’
They talked a while longer undisturbed, and Sammie thought her mum must have assumed both boys had gone home, because she was sure if her mum had any inkling she’d been up in here in her bedroom with one of the boys for this long she’d have come upstairs to interrupt them.
‘Why did your mum leave?’ Sammie asked Jay.
‘I don’t really know,’ he said. ‘My dad used to tell me that my mum had gone away to find herself and that she must be well hidden because it was taking a long time. Then he used to laugh like he’d said something really funny. I didn’t understand what he meant because I was only a little kid, so I took it literally and started telling a teacher that my mum had got lost and that’s why she wasn’t at home anymore. I think the school told my dad because after that he explained it to me properly.’
‘And what did he say?’
‘He said that she was a selfish, lazy bitch who’d rather go off travelling than deal with her responsibilities.’
‘Really?’ Sammie said, ‘he said that to you?’
‘Yeah,’ Jay said, ‘and when he got ill he used to say “that fucking bitch gave me cancer.”’
Sammie took a deep breath. ‘That’s messed up,’ she said.
Jay shrugged. ‘It’s true though,’ he said, ‘it was hard for him to look after me on his own. Really hard. The stress made him ill.’
Sammie couldn’t think how to answer and they briefly fell into silence, until she suddenly remembered her conversation with Mark. ‘Hey,’ she said, ‘before Mark left, he said some strange things about you.’
‘Did he? What did he say?’
‘He said you like me.’
‘Well, that’s true,’ he said, and Sammie felt herself blush a little.
‘Then he said you won’t treat me well and you don’t care about me.’
Jay stared at her. ‘He said what?’
‘I know,’ Sammie said, ‘weird or what?’
‘I don’t… understand why he would say that.’
‘Neither do I.’
Jay thought about it for a long time, brow furrowed. Sammie watched him silently. His face was nice when he was thinking; he looked brooding, melancholy.
All of a sudden Jay seemed to figure it out. ‘I bet I know what it is,’ he said.
‘Yeah?’
He grinned lopsidedly. ‘Before I met you yesterday, when we’d just seen you around in the village, I used to… say stuff about you.’
‘What kind of stuff?’
‘You know,’ he said, ‘about what you look like. About your—’ he held his hands up to his chest, cupping them like he was holding a pair of boobs. Sammie giggled. ‘The thing is,’ Jay continued, ‘Mark’s family are all really old-fashioned and stuff. Like, they don’t even have the internet at his house, and he had to really fight before they let him have a phone. I guess he probably thinks you go straight to hell or something if you look at a girl’s tits. His parents don’t even let him have sex education at school.’
‘Really?’ Sammie asked. She’d never known anyone whose parents had done that.
‘Yeah, he has to, like, go somewhere else for an hour while they’re teaching it. Him and his sisters are pretty much the only kids in school who aren’t allowed.’
‘Does he… does he not know anything about it?’ Sammie asked, with a kind of wonder.
‘Nah,’ Jay said, ‘he knows about it. I mean, you can’t really not, can you?’
Sammie took it all in for a moment. ‘That’s so weird.’
‘Yeah. But I guess that’s why he said that stuff to you. Maybe he thinks I shouldn’t look at a girl like that unless we’re like, married or something.’
Sammie glanced down at her chest, hidden underneath a cotton t-shirt. Her breasts weren’t very big, and she often thought they were a weird shape – pointy and almost triangular when she wanted them to be firm and round. But she liked that Jay was excited by them – excited enough that he’d even made comments to Mark about it.
‘Do you want to see them?’ she asked.
Jay’s eyes searched her face. She could tell he wasn’t sure he had entirely understood her. ‘See what?’ he asked.
She laughed. ‘My boobs, you idiot.’
Sammie loved watching his face as she took off her t-shirt and bra. He obviously couldn’t believe his luck, and he didn’t take his eyes from her chest as he slowly lifted up one of his hands to touch her.
‘What do you think?’ she asked him, once he’d cupped one of her breasts in his hand.
He looked from her chest up to her face, then down again. ‘I…’ he said. He didn’t seem able to speak, so Sammie kissed him.
Felicity
10
Jay and I spent the rest of the evening talking it through, working out how a meeting with Mark could be arranged.
‘It needs to be something quick and simple,’ I said, ‘I need to get talking to him, fast. Does he… does he have any interests or anything? Some way it would seem like we had something in common?’
‘I don’t know,’ Jay said, ‘not that I know of. I told you before that he doesn’t really do anything much, not as far as I can tell.’
I closed my eyes for a second, thinking. ‘I don’t know,’ I said, ‘I can’t think of any way of meeting him that won’t seem weird.’
Jay tapped his fist against his chin. ‘Okay,’ he said at length, ‘what if you have to go to his flat for help? Like, you need to use a phone or something.’
‘When on earth does that ever happen nowadays?’
‘Well,’ he said, ‘if you didn’t have your phone because… you’d been mugged.’
I stared at him. It sounded crazy, but actually, it might just work.
‘It would have to be convincing,’ I said, ‘I couldn’t just turn up at his door, I’d need to look hurt and shaken. I… I’d have to be injured somehow.’
‘You mean… you want me to hit you?’
‘I… I don’t know. I guess… I…’ I trailed off, and then an idea occurred to me. ‘How about this,’ I said, ‘we go over there, check his lights are on and he’s definitely in, and then we could figure something out about making me look injured on the spur of the moment.’
‘I don’t know,’ Jay said, ‘I can’t… you don’t want me to do anything to you in the van or in the street – someone might see me. I can drive over there, check he’s in and then come back and pick you up.’
‘No,’ I said, ‘I might have changed my mind by then. I’m coming with you.’
Jay gave me a long, hard look. ‘Alright,’ he said, ‘fine. Let’s go then.’
It was a very strange drive over to Mark’s flat. We cruised down the street past the house, checking for signs of life, and sure enough a light was on in one of the downstairs windows. Seeing that, Jay pulled up a safe distance away in case Mark should look out.
‘Now, do you definitely understand what you’re doing?’ Jay asked me.
‘Yes.’
‘Go over it again for me.’
‘Okay,’ I said, ‘I knock on the door, say I’ve been mugged and I need to use his phone. I tell him it’ll be a little while before my flatmate can pick me up, giving me a good few minutes to talk to him and suss him out. Then I say you’re probably waiting and I leave.’
Jay nodded, satisfied that I’d got it. ‘And what name will you use for me if it comes up in conversation?’ he asked.
‘Jaso
n,’ I said, ‘because if I start saying Jay it gives me a chance to recover it. Are you… when are you going to hit me?’
‘Not yet,’ he said, ‘come on.’
We both got out of the van, and he gave me a hug, before taking my hands in his. ‘I love you, Fliss,’ he said, ‘and I’m so grateful to you for doing this.’
I started to say I loved him too, but I was beginning to feel nervous and before I got the words out he’d let go of my hands, got hold of my head, and smashed my face as hard as he could against the side of the van.
I cried out in pain and shock, but before the noise could alert anyone he clapped his hand over my mouth and we both sunk to our knees while he inspected his handiwork.
‘Right,’ he said, as I sobbed against the palm of his hand, a warm trickle of blood seeping from my nose and running over his fingers. ‘I’m happy with that.’
I continued to cry, and he held me close. ‘Fliss, I’m so sorry,’ he whispered into my hair.
‘I need…’ I said, ‘I need… to go.’
He didn’t let me out of his arms straight away. ‘I love you,’ he said again, ‘I couldn’t do it while you were expecting it. If you’d been looking at me waiting for me to hit you in the face I wouldn’t have been able to.’
‘Let me go,’ I said, pushing him away, ‘let me go and do this.’
I practically held my breath all the way to Mark’s front door, following Jay’s instructions about going round the side of the building to the door to Flat A. My head was pounding, blood was dripping from my nose unchecked, and I didn’t know how I could possibly keep up any kind of pretence the way I was feeling. I even considered giving up and going back to Jay in the van, but as though he guessed what I was thinking I heard the engine start, and watched helplessly as he drove away. With nothing else for it, I took a deep breath and stopped at Mark’s front door. Then I knocked on it.
Sammie
11
By the time Sammie started her new school on Monday, her and Jay were undeniably an item. She had seen the boys again at the weekend – they’d met in the little clearing in the woods near her garden, and sat on the dead tree. But she and Jay had spent most of the time making out, until Mark got fed up and went home. In fact, it surprised her how much Jay was willing to do in front of his friend, because as well as kissing her, he put his hand up her top to feel her breasts again. In fact, only when his hand dropped down to the fastening of her jeans and she whispered, ‘not yet,’ did he seem to remember Mark was there at all, and the boys exchanged a look with each other, one that Sammie didn’t really understand.
On the morning of her first day, Sammie’s mum announced that she would work from home, so that she could drive Sammie into school and pick her up at the end of the day. Although Sammie supposed the gesture was well meant, she didn’t want to miss the opportunity of seeing Jay on the bus, and besides, however well meant it was she knew her mum’s gesture was ultimately an empty one. By tomorrow she’d be gone again, not getting home until nine or ten at night. Sammie was beginning to understand the routine by now. For all their talk of a new start in the country, her parents didn’t want to be there. To make a new start you had to try, and all her parents tried to do was bury themselves in work.
She told her mum she’d catch the bus, and although she was happy that this meant she could sit next to Jay for a while, the rest of the day didn’t work out quite the way she hoped. Once she got to Rangewood School she discovered that not only were the two boys not in the same form group as her, but that her and Jay were in almost none of the same classes. She was in all the top sets, with Mark, but Jay was not, and so she only managed to see him during break times.
…
It was a weird day. The school was smaller than the one she’d gone to before, and it was scruffier. Her old school had been new and smart – while this one had been built in the sixties or seventies – it was boxy and somehow flimsy looking; an ugly mishmash of red panelling and red brick. The teachers tried half-heartedly to settle her in, but she was in her final year, and she felt they weren’t that interested in a new arrival so late in the day. As if this wasn’t bad enough, she immediately fell into the role of being the strange new outsider, with boys staring at her and girls seeming to dislike her instinctively; especially after she spent the whole of break time entwined with Jay, giving everyone the impression she was some sort of slag.
‘They think you only met him today,’ Mark said to her quietly in double maths.
‘I don’t care what they think,’ she whispered back.
By the time the day was almost over, she felt completely drained. The worst lesson of all was the final one: History. Neither of the boys were in her class and so she ended up having to sit on her own at the back of the room, the other kids stealing the occasional glance at her. Even though proper teaching hadn’t really begun yet – the lessons on the first day were mostly about getting organised and talking about the year ahead – Sammie already felt unsettled and out of her depth and thought she would struggle to stay afloat. The more enthusiastic of her teachers told her she could go to them if she needed extra help, but Sammie doubted whether she would bother. She tried, but she just couldn’t seem to think of the exams as being that important. The most important thing to her now was Jay, and the next time she would get to be alone with him again.
When the bell rang and it was finally home time, Sammie practically ran to the road at the front of the school to get to the bus stop. She hoped that Jay might already be there, but he wasn’t, and she felt lost in the crush of people she didn’t know. She noticed one group of boys staring at her, and eventually lost her temper.
‘What?’ she said, ‘what do you want?’
The largest boy in the group – a horrible, greasy-looking slab of a human being – turned to her and said, ‘get them out then.’
To begin with she simply didn’t understand. Then a bolt of shock went through her. Surely Jay hadn’t told them?
One of the other boys joined in, removing any shadow of a doubt that they knew. ‘Go on, new girl, show us your tits.’
They burst out laughing at her look of shock. But she wasn’t going to let them win that easily. She started unbuttoning her school shirt. ‘There you go,’ she said, flashing them her bra. ‘Happy now?’
They all stared at her, amazed, then they burst out laughing again while Sammie did her shirt back up, feeling ashamed. She wasn’t quite sure who had won out of that exchange, them or her. But one thing was for sure – Jay had really let her down. Far from making her first day easier, he’d turned her into a laughing stock.
She ignored Jay the whole of the bus ride back to Tatchley, much to his confusion.
‘What is wrong with you?’ he asked her, taking hold of her shoulder from his seat behind her.
‘Nothing,’ she said, wriggling away from him.
Jay leaned closer. ‘Why are you being such a bitch then?’ he hissed at her.
Sammie spun round. ‘Because you told everyone!’ she said, ‘you told everyone I showed you…’ she lowered her voice, although only a couple of other kids remained on the bus; an unhealthy looking boy a couple of years older than them, and Mark’s two younger sisters, who sat as far away from their brother as possible, giggling and whispering together. Sammie met Jay’s eyes. ‘You told everyone I showed you my breasts.’
‘I didn’t tell anyone anything!’ Jay said, ‘what are you on about?’
Sammie glared at him. ‘Then why were there boys at the bus stop asking me to show them my tits?’
Jay frowned. ‘I didn’t tell anyone,’ he said. ‘I swear. The only person who knows is…’ his eyes slipped across to Mark, who was sitting quietly on the other side of the aisle, making a show of being interested in the fields rolling by outside the window.
‘Hey,’ Jay said to him. Mark looked round slowly. ‘Why’ve you been telling everyone about me and Sammie?’
Mark couldn’t give a satisfying answer, and when the
y reached Tatchley his sisters made off without a backwards glance, and Mark looked nervous as both Jay and Sammie took a step towards him.
‘Why’d you do it, Mark?’ Jay asked him, ‘you jealous or something?’
Mark looked down at the ground. ‘No,’ he said quietly.
‘You are,’ Jay said, ‘you’re jealous of me and Sammie. Just because you haven’t even seen a pair of tits before.’
Mark met Jay’s eyes, and Sammie saw he’d gone a bit red. ‘Of course I’ve seen tits before,’ he said.
‘Oh,’ Jay said, ‘what? Your mummy’s, when you were a baby?’
Mark turned away again and Sammie couldn’t help but let out a little giggle, even though her insides twisted uncomfortably at the way Jay was taunting his friend. She was angry with Mark for what he’d done, but with what Jay had told her about Mark’s old-fashioned family, she could see that what Jay was saying was a little too close to the truth.
‘Leave him, Jay,’ she said, ‘he’s not worth it. Let’s go to the woods or something.’
‘I’ve got a better idea,’ he said to her, making a point of Mark overhearing, ‘my mum’s still at work, why don’t you come back to mine?’
Sammie let her gaze slip across to Mark, and she noticed his eyes were shiny, like he was almost in tears. She took Jay’s hand, but before they’d taken a single step Mark said, ‘you know he only wants you to go home with him so he… so he…’ he stammered to a halt and gave up.
‘What?’ Jay said nastily, ‘so that I can what?’
Mark looked so uncomfortable and the tears in his eyes were so visible that Sammie was scared he actually would cry. ‘Come on,’ she said to Jay, ‘let’s go.’
‘No,’ Jay said, ‘if he’s got something to say let him say it. Go on, Mark.’
Mark opened his mouth, but he couldn’t get any words out.
‘Say it,’ Jay said, ‘say what you were going to say.’
Mark tried again, stammering to Sammie, ‘he only wants you to go to his house so he can…’ he almost gave up again, then in a final desperate attempt he said, ‘so he can… so he can have sex with you!’
Anything for Him Page 5