Student

by David Belbin

  ‘And he didn’t report you to the police?’ Helen.

  ‘Huw always put mud on the plates.’ Aidan pauses, takes another hit of brandy. ‘The police made a big thing of that at the trial, that we always put mud on the plates. Said it showed premeditation. Like we were looking to kill someone.

  ‘The night of the crash was just like any other night. We were at a loose end. I didn’t have any weed. Huw wanted to go to a party but I wasn’t up for it. I suggested the drive. I thought it might get my adrenaline going, make me more sociable.

  ‘I think Huw suggested that I drive. Not a dare. More that he was growing out of it. He had a car all the time, while I hardly got to use my mum’s. Driving was more of a thrill for me. Technically, I wasn’t insured to drive his car. That came up in court too.

  ‘Sometimes, before, it was a random thing. We wouldn’t do it or we’d start to, then drop back, turn off. That night, we were really up for it, almost like we’d decided it was going to be the last time, so it better be good.

  ‘They had a big car, a Volvo. Neither of us could tell how old they were. I suppose that made their reactions slower. They were on the long road out from the golf club. Blind corners, lots of dips. They were doing 25, 27 tops. Huw got really pissed off when they wouldn’t speed up at all. Then I started nudging them. Just tapping the bumper. And it had the required effect. They speeded up. We stayed right on their tail. Got up to forty, forty-five. Huw urged me to nudge them again, but it’s harder to do a nudge once you get to forty. They were up to fifty when, suddenly, they start to brake and I ran into the back of them. Not hard, there was barely a scratch on Huw’s car afterwards, but his brakes weren’t as efficient as theirs and they had to keep going.

  ‘If there hadn’t been anything on the main road when they came out, it would have been OK. But there was. I swerved around the accident. You could tell it was bad. The woman whose car they hit, the airbag in her Polo came up and she was all right. Well, she started bleeding from the nose when Huw went to talk to her. She was in shock. Later it turned out she’d broken her forearm. She couldn’t drive again for months afterwards. But basically, she was all right because the old couple only sideswiped her. After they did that, they went off the road, straight into the lamppost.

  ‘Their car was twelve years old. It didn’t have airbags, but that probably wouldn’t have saved them anyway. They were going too fast.’

  Steve breaks the silence that follows. ‘How did they catch you?’

  ‘I phoned the ambulance on my mobile. For five minutes, we were responsible citizens, looking after the woman from the Polo, putting out the red triangle from Huw’s car. Then the police came and she must have said something because they arrested us both. She’d seen the way the old couple’s car came out onto the main road, knew there was something odd going on. There were a couple of other witnesses. One of them talked about how terrified the old guy looked. He’d had heart surgery, his daughter told the court, thought he wouldn’t live to see his second grandchild. And he didn’t, because of us.’

  ‘I got off lightly, mainly because I’d been sectioned by then. Huw’s parents told him what he had to do to get off and he got off. He wanted to confess, he didn’t want to dump me in it. Not that I gave a shit. Now I’m here and he isn’t. Some dare, eh?’

  ‘You can’t beat yourself up forever,’ Zoe says.

  ‘Watch me try,’ Aidan says. Then he quickly adds, ‘Anyway, it’s Allison’s turn now. Who hasn’t had a question? Zoe?’

  Zoe and I look at each other. She’s pale. I look at Steve looking at Aidan. They can distance themselves, these men, see their own lives in abstract. Maybe it’s the drugs they’re on, or maybe it’s in their characters. Tonight, I don’t like Steve much and I don’t want to stay around Aidan. Why did Steve have to ask that question? We could talk this through but he’s off his face and won’t remember in the morning, though I will. I suspect Zoe feels pretty much the same.

  ‘I’m ready for bed,’ I say. ‘Zoe, do you want to sleep in our room tonight, leave the guys to it?’

  She nods and gets up. We leave without making eye contact, without saying goodnight. On the way back to my room, neither of us utters a word.

  Eating Out

  Vic says she’s moving out.

  ‘It’s not your fault, it’s just the way things go. We were best mates, but now you and Steve are all over each other and we hardly talk.’

  ‘You’re exaggerating.’

  ‘You didn’t call me once when I went home in the summer, Allison. You didn’t ask if I wanted to go to Ibiza with you.’

  ‘That’s because it was all couples.’

  ‘Straight couples.’

  ‘But you’d split up with Liz at the time.’ They split up the week before they were meant to move into a shared flat, but they‘ve since got back together. ‘You’d have felt...’

  ‘Exactly,’ she interrupts.

  ‘It’s not like that,’ I tell her, though I can see that it is. ‘The first few weeks of going out with someone, of course you haven’t got time for anyone else. That’s inevitable. But we can solve this, make space for each other.’

  ‘Too late, babe. I’ve already paid the deposit on the room. Mr Soar says he’s got someone else waiting to move in.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘I never thought, you know, you and Steve,’ she says, her voice oozing disappointment. ‘I hope it works out for you.’

  She’s breaking up with me. I haven’t had a friend formally break up with me since primary school. Friendship is like romance. It needs to be nurtured. And I haven’t done much nurturing since Mum had her stroke. Vic didn’t know how to deal with that. She turned to Liz and I turned to Mark. At least that’s how I saw it at the time. Then there was Steve, waiting to become my lover. And, somewhere along the way, Zoe became my new best girl friend, only Vic doesn’t know this, because she’s never met Zoe.

  Update: Aidan and Zoe are still together. Zoe thinks that telling everyone about the crash marked a major turning point for Aidan and, having done his worst, as it were, Aidan’s seen that nobody got really freaked out, so now he can get on with his life. After that night, Steve said, “I can’t believe you used to be into that guy.” Otherwise, we never discussed it.

  Mark and Helen, meanwhile, are still in a sort-of-going-out state, but they’re not living together. Mark has moved into the city. I said there might be a room in our house, but he prefers to live alone. Or, at least, not with me and Steve.

  I hardly know the three new people who’ve moved into the house. Sometimes it feels like I’m living alone. Steve is out a lot. His course, unlike mine, is pretty much nine to five. He works three nights a week and Saturdays at the ticket agency. There are nights when my being behind the bar clashes with his nights off, so we don’t spend that much time together. Instead of making love twice a day, we’re lucky to do it twice a week. I call it ‘making love’ but he never tells me he loves me. I never use the word either. Some people don’t. That’s cool.

  The third time I complain that I’m not seeing enough of him, Steve’s announces that he’s taking me for a meal. He’s booked a table at the Loch Fyne Oyster Bar, which is a posh seafood restaurant on King St. As we go in, I worry about his motives. It’s a classic male move, or so Zoe tells me. Take the woman somewhere smart when you want to dump her. She won’t dare kick off and make her humiliation public.

  We get a table on the side, facing in. Steve asks for a special menu and I realise that he’s got some bargain deal, with a free glass of house white thrown in. That’s more like Steve. I begin to relax. The food is good. We order more glasses of wine. Steve is on good form, telling anecdotes about customers at the ticket agency, mentioning gigs we might go to, listening attentively when I explain a problem I’m having with an essay. I talk about Barthes and the death of the author and the lover’s discourse, make links with how Vic and I used to talk about limerance.

  ‘Remind me what limerance means again,’ Ste
ve says. So I do and he goes off on one about how romantic love is a concept invented by women. Steve has this irritating habit whereby he’ll take in a new bit of information, or some theory that he agrees with, then act like he knew it all along — because, with his huge ego he thinks he has, he just hasn’t put it in into words before. He then goes on to form an instant opinion about the topic. I’ve seen other boys behave this way in seminars. They think they know everything. At least, in a seminar, there’s a lecturer to shoot them down, or expose their contradictions. Over dinner, I choose my words carefully.

  ‘You could be right,’ I say, and hate myself for it.

  We’re finishing off our main course when I see him wince slightly, then aim a smile behind me. I don’t turn round.

  ‘Someone you know?’

  ‘One of my tutors.’

  A few minutes later, when I’m going to the loo, I notice a woman checking me out. She’s a Helen type, athletic looking, with long curly hair and cleavage. When I come back from the loo, two minutes later, she’s in fierce discussion with the other women at her table.

  ‘You should tell her,’ one of them is saying.

  ‘Just show her,’ says the third, and grabs my arm as I’m going by.

  ‘Take a look at this,’ she says. ‘You ought to know what kind of man you’re going out with.’

  The woman with the long hair hands me her phone. The message is from ‘Steve’. It read ‘ID FAR RTR B EATING WT U SX’.

  ‘Nice,’ I say, handing the phone back.

  Steve asks me what it is. ‘What did that woman say to you?’

  ‘You mean your tutor?’

  ‘She’s someone I slept with once. I don’t remember her name.’

  ‘Only her phone number?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘She showed me the text you sent.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Then why don’t you go and ask her?’ I snap, pick up my coat and hurry out, not looking in the direction of the text woman’s table. I’m on the bus home before Steve phones me.

  ‘I challenged her after you’d gone. She was playing a game. I said I’d call her back and I didn’t, so she decided to get revenge.’

  ‘I was less than five minutes in the loo. She didn’t have time to plot such an elaborate little revenge.’

  ‘It only takes a minute to send a text. It was one of her mates’ ideas.’

  ‘She had time to fake the caller ID too?’

  ‘Takes seconds. Do you really think I’m that devious, or desperate?’

  ‘I don’t know what you are, Steve, but I do know that you’re sleeping in the front room tonight.’

  ‘I could have any woman at that table. They were jealous of you.’

  I hang up. Steve doesn’t come home until two in the morning. He sleeps in the front room, as I requested. Next day, we both act like nothing really happened. He was probably telling the truth, I decide. But I can’t be sure. I’ll never be sure.

  A week later, I’m home alone when Mark turns up. He’s taken some magic mushrooms and is floating in an odd way. He offers me some but I don’t fancy it. I’ve heard stories about people being poisoned by mushrooms.

  ‘Probably a good thing,’ he tells me. ‘They make you horny. We might not be able to keep our hands off each other.’

  ‘I’ve not heard that,’ I say. ‘Maybe you ought to go and see Helen.’

  Mark’s eyes focus on the middle distance. ‘Helen... she’s not freezing me out, exactly but, you know Helen, she’s always going to get offers. It was only a matter of time before...’ He loses track of the sentence.

  ‘Steve could be seeing someone else for all I know,’ I tell Mark. ‘He has the opportunity, and the track record.’

  I try to talk to him about Vic, who he got on with.

  ‘Vic was in love with you,’ Mark says. ‘Aidan was no threat to her but once you started screwing Steve, of course she was out of here. End of.’

  He starts to say something about sex and friendship but it drifts into how Helen was upset about what he said about me that night on holiday and then some maudlin stuff about being everyone’s fallback guy. I can tell he’s jealous of Steve and I don’t want to go there, so I try to put the conversation back on track, let Mark know how great his life is.

  ‘You’ve got lots of male friends. I’ve only got Zoe, and she’s in West Kirby. I’m not sure that’s natural.’

  ‘You’re a loner,’ Mark says, his eyes unnaturally bright. ‘You get on with men because you’re hunting for one. You have one best female friend because it’s useful in the hunt sometimes. More would be redundant.’

  ‘You’re saying I’m a totally selfish person.’

  ‘We all are. Get used to it.’

  I like Mark when he’s stoned. He’s interested in exploring ideas, getting to the heart of stuff. I like that he can be totally open about his feelings. When he makes a pass at me, he does it in such a vague way that it’s impossible to be offended, or take it seriously.

  ‘I’m horny,’ he says. ‘Why not? It wouldn’t be the first time. Steve doesn’t have to know. We’re our own people, aren’t we?’

  ‘I tell Steve everything,’ I say, which is a slight exaggeration. ‘And I’m not horny, I’m hungry. Have you eaten?’

  ‘No, I suppose I could...’

  ‘I know you. You’ll be ravenous soon.’

  ‘You’re probably right.’

  ‘Let’s go for a curry.’

  It’s late and it’s raining, but there are plenty of places on the Alfreton Road that stay open until two. We could walk to one in a few minutes, but I decide to drive. That way, I can drop Mark off at his flat and get straight home without having to fend him off again. I have a lecture in the morning.

  The restaurant is dead. One waiter, two other customers. I’d heard that they did good vegetarian dishes but must have heard wrong. My korma tastes of old rubber and has the texture of sludge. Mark wolfs down his King Prawn danshak with a big bottle of Cobra. The other table leaves and we have the place to ourselves, some sappy harp music playing in the background. We’ve run out of things to talk about.

  Mark pushes his meal aside. ‘Think I’ve had enough.’

  ‘Me too. Shall we pay and get out?’

  ‘Yeah’. He checks his wallet. Only a fiver in it. ‘I’ll put it on my card if that’s OK.’

  I hand him a tenner for my share and go to the loo. When I return, Mark stands up.

  ‘Are we sorted?’

  Mark nods. I pick up my coat and take a mint imperial as we leave. Mark is giving me a funny look, but I think it’s the mushrooms.

  ‘You’re not going to be sick, are you?’ I ask, worried about the interior of my smart car.

  He shakes his head and gets in. That’s when it happens.

  I’ve started the engine but not turned on the lights. Three men come charging out of the restaurant. One of them waves a cleaver. Another tries to open the driver door but, even in my panic, I have the wit to lock it. I think I’m going to pee myself. I rev the engine but the biggest man’s in front of the car. I can’t just pull out. Even after midnight, this is a busy road. Where’s a police car when you need one? The three men begin to shake the car. The one with the cleaver waves it as though he’s going to break the window, or at least scratch the hell out of my bonnet. Mark, I notice is getting out his wallet. I don’t want him to give in to these muggers. I’d rather drive over the guy with the cleaver and fuck the consequences.

  One of the guys is shouting about money but the window is closed and his accent is thick so I can’t make out all the words. Then I recognise the waiter who served us.

  ‘Oh shit, Mark, did we just walk out without paying?’

  ‘Give me another tenner. I only have fifteen quid.’

  Seeing the money in Mark’s hand and me scrabbling in my purse, the men stop shaking the car. Mark hands me the fifteen quid, to which I add a tenner. This is more than the
meal would have cost, never mind what it was worth. Mark is shaking. I wind down the window a couple of inches, poke the money out.

  ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry. A genuine mistake.’

  The waiter shakes his head as he takes the money, but the other men are grinning. This little event has made their evening. The chef puts the cleaver behind his back and gives a mock bow.

  ‘Do come and see us again soon,’ he says as I close the window.

  Mark’s flat is on the other side of the Arboretum. I give him an earful as I drive.

  ‘Was that deliberate? Did you really think you’d get away with stiffing people who deal with duplicitous drunks seven nights a week? Have those mushrooms turned your brain to mush?’

  ‘I... I’d forgotten my card,’ is all Mark says, and then he covers his mouth and I can tell he’s about to be sick. I pull over by the cemetery and tell him to get out, quick. He does as he’s told. I watch him vomit through the railings, then clean himself up with a tissue. He gets back into the car.

  ‘I don’t think that curry was a good idea,’ he says.

  I drop him off with a curt ‘goodnight’ and don’t hear from him again for months.

  Random

  Final Year. People panic over dissertation topics, stress over whether to take modules that are all coursework or fifty-fifty split with exams. I opt for coursework: it spreads the stress, makes me feel more in control.

  One of my modules is called Nottingham Fictions. The lecturer passes round this memoir about a bloke going to a football match in the city. It comes in a box and you read the sections in any order you like. The first and last sections are always the same, but the rest are designed to be shuffled. ‘Why do you think he chose to publish it this way?’ the lecturer asks.

  Nobody answers. We’re in our third year, but still people are afraid to make fools of themselves. Including me. Yet I wave my arm.