Tara says: ‘It’s an anniversary.’
She stands up.
‘Two weeks since I fell asleep in your caravan. One week until I go into a ring with a lion.’
Jake says: ‘I don’t like you in Pearl’s clothes.’
Says: ‘You look better when you try less.’
Says: ‘Why are you trying to be like Pearl?’
‘Because people notice her,’ says Tara. ‘Even you.’
Kneeling on the plastic-covered bench, she presses her nose against the window and looks out at the night.
‘So many stars,’ she says. ‘Like a huge dot-to-dot puzzle. I feel as if I could join them all up,’ she says, ‘and make a picture.’
He comes to kneel beside her. Both of them wedged now on the small bench, his arm against her arm, his leg against her leg, hair twisting, tickling her cheek. Tara is learning not to feel him, to know he is sitting beside her on the bench, but to put her mind and all her feelings into a corner of herself –
but he is running a finger up her back, slowly, tracing the bumps of her spine and she is counting to a hundred – twenty-two, twenty-three – because she does not want to misread –
thirty-four, thirty-five – she can feel him on every part of her – forty-nine forty-nine – even though it is just her back, just her back and her lips now against his lips.
And the fingers she has watched hold pens and knives, tie boot laces and lock doors, those fingers brown with the sun, graze-lines like map references all over his palms – after two weeks of imagining.
When it is over, he pulls away from her with an intake of breath. Cool air now along that side of her body. The rasp of the sheets as she kicks her legs under them, watching the pale brown curve of his back.
‘Where are you going?’
He shrugs his shoulders. ‘Get some sleep.’
‘I don’t want to sleep.’
Jake turns to face Tara but he is not looking at her, not even looking through her, but away somewhere and she says: ‘Are you sorry we did that?’
‘No,’ his says. His hand is in her hair now. ‘Please don’t worry, everything is fine.’
He is out walking and she is alone. The candle shadows on the walls look like misshapen heads. Two a.m. The sheet feels cold. And there is the picture of a woman and Tara wants to rip it, tear and tear it to shreds. She turns the woman to face the wall but Tara can feel her still as if she were here in the room. Tara takes the photograph and wraps it in newspaper, hides it at the back of a drawer crammed with brushes and empty jars.
Jake does not ask where the picture is. Tara takes this as a good sign, curling up next to him on the bed. On the radio, a play about a woman in love with one of her father’s friends. She contrives to meet him, turns up at his office without an umbrella in the rain.
‘How did you meet?’
‘Who?’
‘You and Alice?’
‘Who told you her name?’
Jake moves his arm from beneath Tara’s head and she falls back against the wall.
‘How did you meet?’
He will not talk and although he sleeps with her in the bed, his long body stretched out beside her in the darkness, and although she feels him fidget and sigh and jump – his body jumps in his sleep like a cat on a chase – he does not reach for her, not even in his dreaming.
Some nights when he is sleeping but she cannot sleep because he is too close and too far, she slides into the gap between them, curls into his warmth, places her arm across his chest.
Some nights he is not sleeping. Lies very still, feeling the heat of her body. He wants to tell her things. But he cannot find the words, although he chases them like Chinese dragons around his head.
In the middle of a night that is irritable and hot, Jake moves towards Tara and keeps moving. Hands, mouth, legs. They make love in their sleep, although neither of them is sleeping.
In the morning their bodies are still wound around each other, but when he wakes he jumps away from her.
They pretend it did not happen. Not that night or any of the nights that follow.
‘Are you and Jake lovers?’
Tara is standing on a chair and Pearl is hemming her costume.
When Tara says ‘yes’, Pearl’s hands stop moving, pressing, for a moment, a pin into Tara’s leg so that Tara has to say her name ‘Pearl’ over and over before Pearl starts moving again, her fingers thick now and clumsy.
‘He comes to see me,’ says Pearl. ‘If you’re wondering where he goes.’
Tara’s aunt’s watch has disappeared. It is not in its usual place under the bed. Tara gets down onto her knees and pushes her head and arms into the dust and fluff.
‘It’s gone.’
Jake pulls the bed out from against the wall. They search behind the curtains, under the carpet, through all Tara’s books and clothes. It is not there.
‘I saw it just a few days ago,’ says Tara. ‘I remember putting it back in the box.’
‘It has disappeared,’ agrees Jake. ‘Like my photo of Alice.’
That night Tara cannot find her stage costume, although she searches for it for hours. It is missing the next day and the next so that Tara cannot perform for three evenings, watching Pearl from the sidelines.
Tara’s silver hair combs disappear. Then her rucksack. Then her letters.
‘True possessions are like boomerangs,’ says Pearl. ‘They always return to their owners.’
Tara is waiting for Jake in their caravan. Counting the drops on the walls, she feels as if she is wandering with him, outside wandering and all that is left on the bed is a set of clothes.
She puts on a jumper and steps out on to the grass. It is a wet night. The leaves are shining.
Walking between the caravans. Tara hears Sonia the fire-eater snoring. Then the warmth of a cat against her legs. Pearl’s cat. Tara runs her hand over the cat’s fur; she feels her bones, the throb of her breath. The yellow-green of her eyes in the dark, then she is gone.
There is a light on in Pearl’s trailer. Music on the radio. Smoke curling out of the window and into the night.
Pearl’s silhouette against the curtain. A man in a coat with mussed-up hair. He kisses Pearl’s neck, kisses down to her breasts. She curls an arm around him.
‘Stay tonight.’
The man’s hands are inside Pearl’s clothes.
She steps away and Tara can hear his breath in the stillness.
‘Until four,’ says Jake.
‘Five,’ says Pearl.
‘Five,’ says Jake, reaching for Pearl again.
Jake says: ‘I’m sorry I can’t explain,’ he says, ‘about Pearl and me.’
‘Pearl and you,’ she says. ‘All the time.’
‘And Alice?’ Tara asks. ‘Who is Alice?’
‘I can’t tell you that,’ Jake says. ‘Not now.’
He says: ‘I never meant to hurt you.’
And Tara says: ‘I know,’ although she does not know anything.
When Tara wakes and finds Jake is not there beside her, she curls into the darkness. She knows where he is now. Knows where to find him, where to go.
Tara makes buttered toast and sits at the table but she cannot eat. Looking out of the window. She can hear the movement of the wind, the low rustling echo of the trees. A spider on the ceiling lets out a thin silky thread and Tara watches it drop down from its web on to the back of a chair.
‘They’re gone.’ Sonia’s voice is ringing out now into the morning.
Tara does not move, but inside her T-shirt, inside her skin something is crawling along her spine.
‘They’ve taken his car and her trailer,’ Sonia is shouting. ‘Jake and Pearl’
Pearl and Jake.
Outside the air feels cool. Tara’s tongue is thick. The sky is so blue it hurts just to look at it.
‘They were lovers,’ she says at last, voice so low she can barely be heard.
Tara looks at Sonia: heart-shaped face, blonde hair tha
t is curling around her neck.
‘Jake is Pearl’s brother,’ Sonia is saying.
‘Pearl’s brother?’
Tara is a parrot, repeating words, not understanding. The air is so sharp and clear it is hard for her to breathe.
‘What about Alice?’ she asks. ‘Who was she?’
‘Alice was their mother. She trained lions,’ says Sonia. ‘Like them, she ran away.’
Tiffanie Darke
Tiffanie Darke first put pen to paper when she stopped being a waitress and became Food and Drink Editor of the Daily Telegraph. One glance at the outrageous shenanigans going on in restaurants of the rich and famous convinced her she had to write a novel about it and the result was Marrow – a gloriously wicked tale of caviar, tantrums and impossibly handsome chefs. She went on to launch Style magazine for The Sunday Times and was editor in chief for many formative years. She is now Creative Content Director at The Times, The Sunday Times, and the Sun where she heads up a creative agency Method. This story is for Charlotte – and all the girls who’ve been there and done that.
The Seven Steps from Shag to Spouse
Tiffanie Darke
Preliminary: The Pull
Charlotte sat in the corner under the plastic palm tree. The music around her thumped and roared and the occupants of the bar were already swaying. Julia was having trouble fighting her way back to the table without spilling their drinks.
‘Here you go – now that should cheer you up.’
‘What is it?’ asked Charlotte, eyeing the fizzing concoction suspiciously.
‘That, my dear, is a TVR, and if that doesn’t give you wings tonight, nothing will.’
‘A TVR?’
‘Yup – tequila, vodka, Red Bull. Now shut up, down it, and FLIRT!’
Julia picked up her glass, gulped half of it down, squealed, then surprised herself by finding the Steps’ song was worth standing up and dancing to after all.
Charlotte watched as a couple of the men near their table turned round to watch her hips moving in her silver dress. Julia was tall, blonde and gorgeous – she also, annoyingly, only had so much as to look at a sun-lounger to go a deep shade of golden brown. Charlotte looked down at her own pale legs – not half as exposed as Julia’s – and sighed. Not that she cared much. Julia had dragged her to Majorca for the week to ‘get the shags in’ but this was something Julia had more fun with than Charlotte. It had been four months now since Charlotte had moved out of Dominic’s, and apart from one disastrous Friday night in the pub after work, Charlotte had failed to be interested in anyone.
‘You’ve got to get back on that horse!’ Julia lectured, but frankly Charlotte couldn’t see why. What was it all for anyway? You gave them your heart then they let you down. Christ, she had even said she would marry Dom – and she would have done – but somehow it had all gone wrong.
‘All right, love?’ boomed someone uncomfortably close to Charlotte’s ear. ‘Can I get you another drink?’
Charlotte turned round to confront the English voice behind her. A tall, mildly handsome boy in a white T-shirt and jeans was leaning over her. Charlotte was about to turn him down when she caught Julia’s eye, hesitated, and replied:
‘Um, yes, thank you.’
‘What you having then?’ he asked, clearly delighted not to have been knocked back.
‘It’s called a TVR.’
‘A TVR?! Right then,’ he said, thinking, she must mean business. When he got back from the bar he introduced himself as Dave. Charlotte noticed he had kind eyes, and a fringe that flopped over his face in quite a cute way. But she didn’t want to talk to him, so she drank her TVR while he told her about a beach he and his mates had been to that day. By her third drink, however, she had changed her mind, and found herself regaling him with the tale of their scooter crash, and by the fourth she had accepted his offer to dance. By the fifth, (they were in a different bar now and Julia seemed perfectly happy chatting up the barman who was taking a very healthy interest in her cleavage), she had discovered Dave had very soft skin on his forearms. And rather delicious lips. After her sixth she couldn’t remember a thing.
Step One: The Shag
The sun streamed through the window and on to the bed, filtering through the slats of the blinds and painting the two naked bodies with yellow and black stripes.
One stirred, nudging the other as it did so. Charlotte opened her eyes. White, scratchy sheets, an upturned glass on a side table she didn’t recognize and the torn purple foil of a condom packet greeted her gaze. A throbbing in her head warned her not to move. The arm around her waist tightened its grip and she tried to remember. Not a thing. Slowly, Charlotte rolled over and looked at the boy. He had dark hair and strong shoulders. He opened his eyes and smiled at her.
‘Morning, gorgeous,’ he muttered into her hair.
‘Morning,’ said Charlotte, thinking, what the hell is his name. Inwardly she began to giggle – she was still drunk, and she thought it was hilarious she was lying in bed with a total stranger in a room somewhere in Majorca, God only knows where. She couldn’t help it – she began to laugh.
‘What is it?’ he asked, concerned that he may have just slept with a lunatic.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Charlotte eventually, when she managed to control her hysterics, ‘but I don’t know your name!’
Now he laughed too. ‘Dave – and yours is Charlotte, by the way.’
He made her some foreign tea and brought her a slice of melon in bed and they kissed some more. Charlotte got up, put on her black dress and platform shoes and left, promising she’d meet him later in the same bar. In fact she didn’t even know the bar he was talking about. She spent all morning screaming with laughter with Julia by the pool, who was snuggled up on her sun lounger with the Spanish barman called Carlos she’d picked up the night before.
Step Two: The Regular Shag
Two nights later, across the floor of a nightclub, she saw him again. At least she thought it was him, but she wasn’t sure until he came up and said ‘Hi’ with that look in his eyes. Charlotte smiled back at him coyly, and he asked her if she would like another TVR.
‘Not on your life, it’s taken me two days to recover from the other night.’ Then she noticed his disappointment and felt flattered, and said ‘OK, I’ll have a pina colada then.’
The next morning they actually had a sober conversation, and discovered they both came from the same town – Bournemouth. Then they discovered they had mates in common and drank in the same pubs. Charlotte wasn’t sure if this was a good thing – he was her holiday fling, she didn’t want him rearing his guilt-provoking face back home. But they ended up in bed together the next night as well, and Charlotte began to feel relaxed, lethargic even. In a nice way.
Step Three: The Monogamous Shag
The Night Jar had its legendary end-of-summer party two days after Charlotte and Julia got back from Majorca, but this time Charlotte took extra care with her make-up. She dragged Julia along too – who claimed to still be in mourning for Carlos (his parting words were ‘You are amazing, you English women,’ but he had resisted Julia’s entreaties to follow her back to England). Still, Julia seemed to get over it with her first vodka, lime and soda. Dave was there, as he had said he would be, and Charlotte felt surprised at how her tummy jolted when she saw him. As soon as he caught sight of her he came over, and they spent the next hour flirting with each other, as if they’d only just met. They left early.
They were getting on well in bed together too – as they learned more about each other’s bodies the sex got better. After a while, they came together. The mechanical procedures that Charlotte had undertaken in her last few months with Dominic seemed like a different sport. If that had seemed like a school cross-country run, then this felt like snowboarding. It was exciting – and addictive. She didn’t know much about him, didn’t know whether she even liked him, but this – she knew she wanted this. She found herself agreeing to a date the following weekend.
&nbs
p; ‘So, you two an item then?’ asked Julia, trying on Charlotte’s new trousers for the date.
‘Nah, don’t be silly, the last thing I want is another boyfriend. We’re just sleeping together.’
‘But neither of you is sleeping with anyone else?’ asked Julia slyly, watching in the mirror as a look passed across Charlotte’s face.
‘Well, I’m not.’ She paused as she digested this new possibility. ‘Why, do you think he is?’
‘Could be,’ said Julia. ‘You never know – if you’re not “seeing each other”, there’s no reason why not.’
‘No – I ‘spose not.’
Charlotte was alarmed. She knew she shouldn’t mind, but she thought if he was sleeping with someone else at the same time as he was seeing her she might mind rather a lot. All these games, she didn’t understand them, it had been too long since she had last played.
Step Four: Boyfriend and Girlfriend
The Italian was small and naff – the candles were stuck in Chianti bottles and the windows were half-covered in matted blinds, but the moment they walked in Charlotte knew she loved it. Dave held her by the hand and squeezed it as the manager came bounding across the room and kissed Dave rapturously on either cheek.
‘Mama mia, Dave, ees been so long, why you no come here no more? Is good to see you again! And this lovely laydee – she your sister no?’
‘No, Marco, this is Charlotte, my girlfriend.’
The word shot through Charlotte like a lance – girlfriend?! She didn’t recall that being agreed. But she said nothing. They ate their meatballs and spaghetti in the candlelight and wallowed in each other’s gaze. Conversation seemed unnecessary, and by the time she was in his arms in the back of a taxi she thought she quite liked the sound of it.
Step Five: I Love You
The next few months took Charlotte completely by surprise. She had never expected – least of all wanted – to be back on the romantic merry-go-round, but this boy! He just made her feel so damned happy. The exuberance, the fun, the chemistry between them: it was quite fantastic, and she just couldn’t leave it alone. After the deathly, stultefyingly depressing last months with Dominic, then the misery of the break-up and the aftermath of adjusting to single life again this – this thing with Dave – felt like living again. It was winter now, and bitterly cold, but the way Charlotte felt inside she could just as well have been in the Caribbean. She was having fun.
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