by Lucy Dillon
Gina cupped her scalding mug in her hands, and tried to work out how she did feel, right now. ‘Most of the time I’m fine. Sometimes I’m . . . not. But it’s mainly a relief. Things weren’t right with me and Stuart. Maybe I should have been braver and ended it myself, instead of letting it fail.’
‘You didn’t fail. You two had a lot to deal with,’ said Naomi at once. ‘Way more than most couples have to face in a lifetime.’
‘But that’s what’s so awful.’ She winced. ‘Isn’t going through bad times together supposed to make you stronger? I know that’s what everyone’s thinking – they got through that, how come they split up now?’
‘No one’s thinking that. If they’re thinking anything, it’s that Stuart’s having an early on-set midlife crisis and you’ve kicked him out. How long were you together? Nine years? Ten?’
‘Nearly nine. And married for five and a bit.’ Gina winced. What was that feeling? Shame? Despair? Nostalgia? Marriages weren’t meant to collapse so soon. Not round here. ‘Do you need a steamer, by the way? For some reason, we got three for wedding presents. I’m going to put a notice up on the board at work. I’m having a purge. ’
‘Gina, you don’t have to throw everything away.’
‘I do. I want to.’ She gestured at the boxes. ‘Where would I put it anyway? This flat is a fresh start. All white and clean and mine. Whatever I choose to put in it has to say something about who I am now.’
‘Riiight.’ Naomi picked at her croissant and tried to look encouraging.
Gina carried on. It was the first time she’d explained her plan in words, and saying it aloud made it feel more definite. ‘There’s no room here for anything I don’t really love or need, so I’m going to keep a hundred things that I can’t live without. The rest has to go. And then I’ll be able to appreciate the hundred things properly, instead of having drawers of stuff I never look at.’
‘Whoa there!’ Naomi put her croissant down. ‘You’re a hoarder, you’ve always been a hoarder. Is this the interior-designer version of cutting all your hair off and having a dolphin tattooed on your bum?’
‘I’m just being practical. I can’t unpack my old house here. There’s no room, and that house is gone. That person’s gone. And I’ve been carting all this stuff around with me for years, so it’s about time I had a sort-out.’
‘But why a hundred? You know that’s not a lot, right? You probably had a hundred candlesticks in your old house.’
‘It’s a nice round number. And it’s not going to include essentials, like, you know, underwear. But I need some rules, otherwise where do I start? One thing I have decided, though,’ Gina added. ‘I’m going to sell a load of stuff and buy myself something really nice. A present for my new place.’
‘That’s a great idea.’ Naomi nodded more enthusiastically. ‘Let me know if you need a bit of help with that. I do a lot of eBaying.’
‘Really?’ Gina was surprised. Not just that Naomi had time to eBay, but that she wanted to. The Hewsons weren’t short of money: Naomi had just gone back to work full-time as the all-seeing, all-knowing practice manager at the dental surgery, and Jason was a senior partner with an IT recruitment company.
‘Yes, it’s brilliant for keeping the clutter under control,’ said Naomi, blithely. ‘I do a cull of the house three or four times a year. Jason’s golf stuff, clothes Willow’s grown out of, books, Christmas presents – you’d be amazed what people will buy with the right description.’ She wiggled her fingers. ‘I quite enjoy doing the descriptions.’
Gina raised an eyebrow. ‘And doesn’t your inability to call a spade a gardening management solution get in the way of a sale?’
‘That’s the weird thing! People appreciate a bit of honesty. I just haven’t told Jay’s mum what my seller name is. Otherwise she’d realise that all those china angels she keeps giving us aren’t actually in the display cabinet she thinks they are.’
Naomi did her half-wink grin, and Gina thought how little she’d changed in the years they’d known each other. The hair had been a variety of colours and styles, and there were a few crows’ feet round the sharp green eyes, but otherwise it was the same bossy, thoughtful, faintly anarchic Naomi she’d encountered on her first day at senior school. Gina felt a sudden clutch of relief that they’d met when they had. It could so easily have been someone else with a space next to them in the classroom. Someone else who had Naomi McIntyre as their best mate, dragging them out of so many gloomy days, instead of letting them wallow.
‘I’ve got something for you, actually,’ said Gina, and clambered her way back into the sitting room to find the shopping bag she’d filled earlier. ‘Although after what you’ve just said I don’t know if you deserve it.’
Naomi accepted the bag with a groan. ‘Is this where you get your own back by re-gifting me all my own Christmas presents?’
‘No! Have a look.’ Gina sat back, anticipating the reaction with a glow of pleasure.
It took a moment, but when Naomi’s shriek of joy came, Gina felt like Santa Claus.
‘Oh, my God! Gina!’ Naomi lifted out a precious stack of old 1990s magazines, Q, Melody Maker, New Woman, her face bright with delight. ‘Oh, my God, I can’t believe you still have these! Are you really sure you don’t want them?’
‘I’ve got loads. I couldn’t keep all of them, and I knew you’d appreciate a bit of nostalgia. Maybe you can put them in storage for Willow. Bit of her mum’s past.’ Gina wasn’t joking. So much of her and Naomi’s teenage years had been spent poring over magazines together, in breaks, in the common room, in Naomi’s noisy kitchen at home. The music magazines in particular meant a lot to Gina: she’d never felt she belonged till she’d got into music, and suddenly the world outside had opened up. You didn’t need to wonder which people to try to make friends with if they were already wearing your favourite band’s tour T-shirt.
‘Just don’t eBay them, please,’ she added. ‘Not straight away, anyway.’
‘Are you kidding?’ Naomi was turning the pages reverentially. ‘This is bringing back so many memories. Oh, no! Look at the old Rimmel adverts . . . You are amazing. And what’s this?’ She reached into the bag and pulled out a black T-shirt, printed with a band logo that was still stiff. Naomi looked up. ‘Didn’t you buy one like this at that gig we went to in Oxford? The one where you met Kit? It’s not this one, is it?’ She sniffed the old cotton. ‘It smells like it’s brand new.’
‘It is.’ Gina stared at the T-shirt. It had felt right to pass it on last night when she’d put it into the bag, but now, seeing it in Naomi’s hands, she felt as if part of her past was slipping under the waters, vanishing as it left her home. She caught herself. This stuff had to go, and it was better that it went to someone who’d understand why she’d treasured it. ‘I bought two, in case one shrank in the wash, or Mum found out where we’d been and I never got to go to a gig again. That’s the spare.’
‘But where’s yours?’
‘I think I gave it to Kit.’
Naomi looked up, and her eyes were sad. ‘Oh, Gee. I can’t take this, then.’
‘No, I want you to.’ Gina hadn’t talked about Kit in a long time. Naomi was the only person she could talk to about him. ‘Keep it for Willow. I couldn’t wear it now – it’s way too small for me. It’d just go back in a drawer, and I need to be ruthless.’
She glanced away. The logo had hooked up a memory that had been stuffed at the back of her mind, hidden away like the T-shirt: Kit sprawled across an unmade single bed, sleeping off a late night in his blue-checked boxers and her T-shirt, his long arms thrown over his head, pulling the T-shirt up his flat stomach with its gentle curves and hollows. Gina had told herself to remember how perfect he looked.
It felt like a very long time ago, and her heart contracted at the freshness of the T-shirt print in Naomi’s hands.
‘No, listen, I’ll happily take the mags, but not this,’ said Naomi, seeing the change in Gina’s face. ‘I want you to keep it and giv
e it to Willow when she’s old enough to appreciate what a cool godmother she’s lucky enough to have.’
Gina forced a smile, but the image wouldn’t go away. She wasn’t in it. That morning had happened to her, she’d been there, but now, even with this T-shirt as evidence, it was as if she was remembering a film she’d seen ages ago. Those mornings with Kit had felt like the beginning of something, the first steps along a long road they’d look back over together, and yet it had stopped, and now it was as if it had never actually happened. It would be the same with Stuart. All those expectations and assumptions, months and years, experiences and memories . . . gone.
Her stomach flipped as if she’d got too close to a sharp drop.
‘Where have the last few years gone, Naomi?’ she blurted out. ‘How are we suddenly this old?’
‘We’re not old, you daft cow,’ said Naomi. ‘We’re just getting started. Life isn’t meant to begin till forty, and that’s years off.’
‘But I feel old. I feel time’s going so fast and I don’t even know what I—’
‘We’re just getting started,’ Naomi repeated, more firmly. She reached across and took her hand, her eyes locking on Gina’s, full of concern and support and an unspoken understanding of all the things that made Gina feel suddenly exhausted whenever she forgot to concentrate on her fresh start. ‘There’s lots more time than you think. Promise.’
Gina managed a watery smile, and squeezed Naomi’s hand.
She didn’t need things to remind her of her past. Not when she had Naomi. Honest, sympathetic, practical Naomi.
When Naomi had left, Gina tidied up the cups and plates and, out of habit, went to put the beautiful scented candle in a cupboard somewhere, to keep for later. For best. For visitors.
She stopped, the box in her hand. She had no cupboards or visitors. She was the only person here, so why save the candle for someone else when it had been given to her?
Before she could think too hard about it, Gina slid the glass jar out of the box and put it on the windowsill, the only clear flat space in the flat. Then she lit it. After a moment or two, the pale blue scent of hyacinths began to fill the room: the spicy-crisp smell of the chilly winter months before spring broke through the greyness.
Chapter Three
ITEM: The Marras T-shirt, student union tour, 1996
Oxford, 1996
Georgina is having the best night of her life so far, and it’s only just gone ten.
She glances from side to side before taking a covert swig from Naomi’s dad’s hip-flask, then realises that no one’s going to tell her not to. No one’s watching, and no one cares that she’s two years under the legal drinking age; everyone around her is either drunk, or on something, or snogging someone, or all three. She fizzes inside with an exhilaration that has nothing to do with the vodka and everything to do with the music pounding through her, and takes another large gulp, which burns her throat, but she grimaces and swallows.
Naomi says vodka doesn’t taste of anything but Georgina isn’t so sure. Not that she’s going to say anything. Mixed with the hormones and sweat in the air, compressed by the low, dark ceiling of this student-union function room, it tastes of liquid headache, but it’s going to have to do, because even with Naomi’s kohl eyeliner on, she still has a nervous suspicion that they look under-age and, anyway, they only have enough money for the bus back to Naomi’s brother’s student halls where they’re crashing for the night.
So, technically, this is a university visit. It’s just to the student union, not to the library, as she assured her mother and Terry.
And it’s brilliant. Gina has the feeling she should be scared, but she’s not. Or if she is, it’s a good kind of scared.
‘This’s the most amazing night ’f my life,’ Naomi slurs, grabbing her arm. Her eyes are shining with the intense joy that Georgina knows will turn into intense weeping in about thirty minutes, and this is just the support act. The Marras, whose album Gina has listened to about a million times, aren’t even on for another hour. ‘You were so right about us coming here!’
‘Thanks!’ Georgina yells back, pleased.
Something she wouldn’t say, even to Naomi: when she’s listening to music, Georgina imagines the interesting person she’s going to be when she finally gets to university. Here. Two more years – six terms, five A levels – and she’ll get the chance to be someone new. Georgina Bellamy had a brace, and prefect’s tie. Gina Bellamy is a writer. An actress. She has a fringe, sexy boots and mystique.
Naomi giggles. ‘Georgina, you’re so . . .’
‘Gina,’ says Georgina, firmly. ‘Gina.’
‘What?’ Naomi looks like she might be about to give her the bit of her mind that remains after half a hip-flask of vodka but at that moment the band launches into the one song the audience has heard of, a cover of ‘Heroes’: they’re not stupid enough to end on one of their own. Georgina and Naomi are shoved forward by the crush of sweating bodies.
Naomi squeals, somewhere in the distance, but Georgina closes her eyes and lets the music wash through her, the beat vibrating and booming outside and inside her body, like she’s not even there. She feels weightless, lifted by the force of the crowd as the band powers through the verse. Then the key shifts, like a huge car changing gear, and the whole room tips over into the chorus, bouncing, yelling, pushing. Georgina’s lips form the words, but the music is so loud she can’t hear her own voice; she can sense, not hear, everyone else singing and it makes her feel tearful. A wave of pure drunken happiness drowns her as she smiles blindly into the darkness pulsing behind her eyelids, stinging with sweat and smeary mascara.
When she does open her eyes, her dry lips parted ready to sing the chorus, he’s looking straight into her face. A boy (man?) with longish blond curly hair, like an angel’s, and wide-set blue eyes that shine with the same dazed pleasure as hers. His black T-shirt’s damp, his face is sheeny with sweat – everyone’s is, so many bodies packed together – and she can smell the heat from his body. It’s a sharp male smell, dangerous and exciting.
‘“We could be heroes,”’ Georgina sings, and it comes out towards him. He smiles and she blushes hotly. Hotter. But she’s not embarrassed. Not even slightly. This is an entirely new feeling. Georgina is embarrassed at least five times a day: by her stepdad, her ‘exemplary’ grades, her neurotic mother’s constant notes to the head, her shoes. She never has the right shoes.
They stare into each other’s faces and Georgina has the weirdest feeling that she’s known him from somewhere before. His face isn’t new to her. She feels like she’s arrived somewhere she’s been heading for all her life. It’s intensely comforting and freaky at the same time.
The crowd are squeezing them closer, and her heart is beating in her throat. They’re still singing, but he’s leaning closer and, without warning, as the guitar solo soars over their heads, he shouts, ‘Kit!’ right in her ear, and there’s a sharp tug inside, as if a giant fish hook has landed in her chest. For a second Georgina wonders if she’s actually hurt, and puts a hand up in surprise.
He grabs it, and cups it to his ear, trying to mime ‘Tell me your name.’ The skin of her arm goosebumps at the sensation of his fingers round her wrist. She shouts, ‘Gina!’
Her voice is drowned, however, by a roar rumbling down from the front. Hard elbows jab in her back, and Gina turns to see a massive rugby-player surfing across the raised hands, upside-down and so close she can smell the beer on his breath, the acrid sweat on his T-shirt. His eyes lock on hers as he crashes nearer, his fist out-stretched like Superman. It’s aiming straight for her head.
Gina panics, but she’s trapped by the crush of bodies around her, arms pinned to her sides. All she can think as he hurtles towards her is, Mum. How’m I going to explain being in hospital to Mum?
She opens her mouth to scream as the boy – Kit – grabs her by the belt of her jeans and drags her away with surprising strength. Gina feels eighteen stones of solid prop forward brush past he
r shoulder and slam into the lads next to her. The whooping crowd bends away like a field of corn, pushing her into Kit’s arms, but before Gina can register the sensation of his skin against hers, hot and intimate in the general crush, it moves back again, and she’s shoved into a stranger’s side, half-lifting her off her feet. By the time she gets her balance on the slippery floor, another surge has surrounded her in a thick forest of strangers. Black T-shirts and clammy backs and a communal body odour, dark under the aftershave and deodorant.
She looks but Kit’s gone. Adrenalin – and disappointment and vodka – rakes her body so hard she wants to cry.
Gina’s foot feels wet and she realises she’s lost her slip-on pump. Naomi’s nowhere to be seen, and she needs the loo. The spell’s broken. Close to tears, she fights her way out of the audience to the back of the hall.
The few cool people hanging at the back ignore her. Gina stands there with ringing ears, one sock sodden with spilled beer. Then, just at the moment she most wants to go home, Kit appears out of the thicket of the audience, with a shoe in his hand. He doesn’t see her at first, and Gina has the luxury of watching him looking for her, his blond hair hanging damply in his eyes. Then he spots her, and his anxious expression turns to a smile. Gina holds her breath as he approaches.
‘Cinderella, I presume?’ He offers her the shoe.
‘Gina,’ she says, taking it. It’s not the one she lost, but she doesn’t care. It’s roughly the right size and her foot’s soaking. Why let a small detail like that spoil the moment?
‘Hang on.’ Kit frowns as she tries to force her heel in. ‘Is that yours?’
‘Near enough,’ she says. They’re both talking too loudly; she assumes his ears are buzzing like hers. ‘Well, no. To be honest, it’s not.’ She smiles apologetically. ‘And I’m not Cinderella.’