The Kiss

by Lucy Courtenay

  ‘I’m not wearing lippy.’

  ‘It’s a figure of speech,’ I say patiently.

  Tabby looks dreamy and disappears off down the long corridor to the Arts Department, her clumpy boots echoing on the lino.

  ‘Do you think Tab will ever kiss me?’ Oz asks, watching her go with the thousand-yard stare of a lovelorn sheep.

  ‘Move on,’ I advise. ‘There are hundreds of unattached girls here to suit your wide-ranging tastes.’

  ‘But I think I love Tabby,’ says Oz earnestly. ‘Seriously, Delilah. I’ve never felt like— hello.’

  A girl in a very tight tank has just swayed past us.

  ‘You’re breaking my heart, Osgood,’ I say.

  ‘Are all girls as sympathetic as you?’ Oz grumbles, pulling his eyes from the tank girl. ‘Coz if they are

  I’m going to turn gay. What the hell have you done to your hand?’

  Chemistry is a lot more fun than Economics. I scrub my hand as clean as I can at the big sinks at the back, then stir and mix and measure and note stuff down. It soothes me, proves how the world – a world I am learning has way too many shades of grey – can sometimes just be straightforward black and white. It is, in scientific parlance, the dogs.

  I want to kiss you again. There was a focus in Jem’s voice that makes me nervous. I need to avoid him from now on or he’ll try it again for sure. And then where will I be? Making all the old mistakes again, that’s where.

  The class starts winding up. Kids are taking off their goggles, formulae are being scrawled on the whiteboard for us to copy down. I make a few final notes in the margin of my pad and stuff everything into my bag. My fingers close on my silent phone.

  I switch it on cautiously. A message flashes up.

  His phone was off. Will try later. Gaslight tonight?

  I delete it before I do something stupid like answer.

  ‘He couldn’t get through,’ I say, the minute I see Tabby, looking wan by the chillers in the canteen at lunch. ‘He texted to say he’d try again.’

  ‘How do you know he’s telling the truth?’ Tabby wails.

  I always mean what I say. I think of Jem exchanging greetings with the most untrustworthy guy in town and feel confused.

  ‘I don’t,’ I admit.

  My phone beeps.

  Please?

  ‘Can lunch be quick?’ I say, deleting the message and switching my phone off. ‘I need to go and see someone about my bank card.’

  ‘I’ve only got three quid on me so it’ll be as quick as one egg sandwich each,’ says Tab. ‘Do you want me to come to the bank . . .’

  Her voice trails off, her eyes fixed on the canteen door. Sam has come in, talking and laughing with a doe-eyed girl whose blond hair almost reaches her bum. Several other guys are with him, trying to get in on the conversation.

  ‘Who’s she?’ I ask, so struck by her curvy figure, confident manner and gleaming poker-straight hair that I forget any kind of sensitivity.

  ‘Maria.’ Tabby’s tone of voice indicates Maria is perfectly interchangeable with Witch Knickers.

  I look at the girl again. She seriously lucked out in the hair lottery. ‘Don’t lose faith. They’re only talking,’ I soothe. ‘I’ll do the bank thing on my own, it’s fine. See you after college, OK?’

  ‘Jem had better call Sam,’ Tab wails after me as I head for the street. ‘Or there’ll be murder in the corridor this afternoon!’

  The personal manager that has been assigned to me is finally saying goodbye to an old lady who’s been yakking at him ever since I arrived at the bank fifteen minutes ago. It’s weird being in here on my own. I feel cowed, like I am in the head teacher’s office for setting fire to the staffroom. Not that I’ve ever done anything like that, of course, unless you count that time with the Bunsen burner and the corner of the supply’s lab coat.

  I sit on the mauve chair in front of the manager’s desk and smile nervously. He looks back at me with all the emotion of an egg as I stumble through my situation.

  ‘Do you know your account number?’ he asks when I’ve finished.

  ‘I normally look on my card only I can’t do that now, can I? My name’s Delilah Jones though and I live at twenty-three Wyvern Court and my security question is Marie Curie – that’s the name of my fish, but you probably don’t need to know that?’ I know I’m waffling but I can’t seem to stop.

  He looks impassively at me. ‘We have that information.’

  ‘Oh. Well, this is my branch and everything so you’ll have my details on your computer,’ I stumble on. ‘When can I get my card back?’

  ‘Assuming everything’s in order, it’ll be a different card,’ says the manager, tapping his keyboard in a bored fashion.

  I think a little sadly about the nice picture I had on my old one. Then I frown.

  ‘Assuming everything’s OK? Are you maybe assuming that it isn’t?’

  ‘Can you tell me how much you have in your account?’ he asks, still tapping.

  ‘I had about four hundred pounds in there a couple of weeks ago. I earned it at the lido in the summer,’ I say, feeling the need to explain myself.

  ‘You have exactly four pounds and twenty-three pence in your account. According to the records, you have tried to access non-existent funds three times, hence the recall of your card today.’

  I grip the chair. ‘That’s . . . that’s not right. Four pounds? As in . . . as in four hundred pence?’

  ‘Four hundred and twenty-three pence, yes.’

  I reel. I’ve spent a fair bit recently, getting ready for college and so on – but I haven’t spent all of it. Have I? There was my winter parka, of course. And eating out in France. And my new phone, lost forever somewhere in the Mediterranean. And – well, a bunch of other stuff. My heart sinks. Stupid, stupid, stupid. How can I have messed this up so badly? Has the Euro exchange rate short-circuited my head?

  ‘Independence is more expensive than most students realize,’ he says a little more kindly. ‘It’s easy for our inexperienced customers to lose track of their finances. I’ll order a new card for you, but unless you put some more money in your account, you won’t be able to use it. Your age means we can’t give you an overdraft.’

  ‘Oh,’ I say, trying to control the wobble in my voice. Like ‘Oh’ covers even one millionth of the situation. ‘I’ll check it out and . . .’

  I have to leave or I am going to burst into tears and no way is Egg Face seeing that. Flapping my hand in silent farewell, I back out of his office and make my way to the doors of the bank, where I take several deep, shocked breaths. I’ve spent four hundred pounds without noticing. I am totally skint in week one of my first year at college. This is bad.

  For one brief unwitting moment, I think of asking Dad to loan me some money. A millisecond later, I realize what a pointless hope that is. He made it clear that I was on my own, cashwise, when I said I wanted to go to college in the first place. I squirm to think of what he’ll say if I tell him I’ve already managed to spend everything I saved. It looks like I’ll just have to stick it out, prove him wrong about being as capable of looking after myself as a hamster in a plastic ball on the M25.

  I need another job. It’s the only way. Where do people find work in term time? They know people, they ask around. Who do I know? How can I find employment?

  I try to calm myself down. I’ve seen something about job vacancies recently. Where? It flickers at the edge of my mind. A pinboard. A crusty brown carpet . . .

  Oh rats.

  I want to make it clear that the only reason I am heading for the Gaslight on an afternoon when I am supposed to be studying in the Science library is because I remember seeing a couple of jobs advertised there. Theatre jobs are most likely to fit around the twenty-four hours a week I need to put in at college this yea
r, aren’t they? Evenings and weekends? The job is the thing, I say to myself. I need money or I can kiss goodbye to uni and the kind of future I want.

  Like chewing gum trying to get off a shoe as it heads towards a cliff, I look desperately in every single window that I pass on my way to the theatre, willing there to be some other part-time job – retail assistant, cleaner, shelf stacker – anything that will stop me having to go up those concrete steps at the bottom of the High Street and feel the crunch of that carpet and see Jem smirk at me from behind the bar, thinking that I’ve come running because he is irresistible. There is nothing.

  Maybe I’ve got it wrong, I tell myself, wringing my hands at the theatre’s double doors. Maybe I’ve mistaken a VACANCIES board for a FOR SALE one – you know the kind of thing: red leather sofa £50; boy’s bike £15 o.n.o.

  He is polishing glasses behind the bar, his glossy black head bent over his task. I tuck my telltale hair deep down inside the collar of my jacket, flatten myself to the wall, resist the urge to shout ‘Cover me!’ and inch towards the big brown corkboard beside the poster of Cinderella.

  Wanted: bar staff. Evening and weekend work.

  Start immediately. See Val, catering manager.

  I rest my head against the bit of paper that spells both my doom and my salvation and close my eyes. Just my luck. It’s perfect.

  ‘All right there, love?’

  I peel myself off the board and stare into the mascaraed eyes of yesterday’s blond lady. She smiles in recognition, shifting the crate of wine she’s holding into a more comfortable position.

  No choice.

  ‘Are you Val?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I’ve come about the job,’ I whisper, keeping my back to Jem and the bar.

  ‘You what?’

  ‘The job,’ I repeat even more quietly, hunching my head deeper into my parka, haplessly gesturing bar actions like pressing optics and pouring drinks. ‘The bar job.’

  Val frowns. ‘What is this, Charades?’

  There is a chink of glasses being set down on the bar behind me. I stare pleadingly at Val, willing her to take pity and remove me to a quiet room where we can discuss things out of Jem’s eyeline. Sudden understanding flares in her eyes as we both hear his footsteps crunching towards us, but it’s too late. She pats me on the shoulder, like you might pat a frightened horse.

  A wide white grin splits his face in two as he clocks me.

  ‘Tonight not soon enough?’

  ‘No teatowel today?’ I say, looking into his flecky eyes with resignation. ‘It lent your face distinction. I’ve come about the bar job.’

  ‘Really?’

  I lift my chin. ‘I need part-time work that fits around college hours and I saw the job board last time I was

  in here.’

  For a moment I think he looks disappointed. ‘You’re too young for bar work,’ he says.

  ‘My dad runs a pub. I mean,’ I amend, ‘he used to run a pub until the brewery closed it last year. I helped out sometimes. It’s OK to be under eighteen if you’re supervised by the licence holder.’

  Val’s eyes flick from me to Jem and back again. She looks amused. ‘I can offer five quid an hour plus tips, Friday nights five until midnight and Saturdays twelve noon for the matinée crowd until the first evening interval at nine. When there’s no matinée, it’s five until midnight, same as Friday. When can you start?’

  My heart sinks. Surely it isn’t going to be this easy? Jobs are impossible to get these days. How come this one is dropping into my lap like an egg rolling off a table?

  ‘Whenever you want,’ I mutter, aware that Jem’s eyes are trained on me like blue-grey searchlights.

  ‘Tonight would be good. Can you be here for five?’

  ‘No problem,’ I say, dying quietly inside.

  Val wags a beringed finger at Jem. ‘We need to train this one up for the Musical in a Month alcoholics next week. Keep your hands off her during work hours and we’ll all get along just fine.’

  My embarrassment levels rocket through the ceiling in a blaze of humiliation and roof tiles. Perhaps Val thinks she’s doing me a favour – girl power and all that. She is plainly under the impression that Jem once ate me up and spat me out, and has decided to encourage me back into the gladiatorial arena to even the score. I am too mortified to tell her that I am the one who did the spitting.

  Jem blasts me with his best stripping stare as Val hauls her crate of wine behind the bar. ‘See you later, bar girl,’ he says.

  The look on his face leaves me in absolutely no doubt that he will ignore Val’s warning the first opportunity he gets. I wonder if maybe I need to go away and practise dodging stuff for a bit.

  ‘I called your friend’s boyfriend again, by the way,’ he calls after me as I flee. ‘Spoke to him this time and got threatened with a punch on the nose. I’m guessing it didn’t help.’

  Poor Tabby. This is going to take more sorting than I thought.

  ‘Thanks,’ I say, stopping reluctantly at the doors. ‘You didn’t have to.’

  ‘I said I would.’

  ‘And your word is law?’

  He smiles. My traitorous tummy does a flip.

  Perfect job, perfect hours, perfect pain in the neck.

  I arrive back at college just in time to witness a virtual replay of Sunday night, minus the kissing.

  Tabby and Sam are standing centimetres apart on the college steps, glaring at each other. Sam is pale with anger while Tab is bright red. The pretty girl with long blond hair – Maria – stands close by. I can see the tension in Sam’s shoulder muscles from here.

  ‘You’re a coward, hiding behind that slab of beef that calls himself a barman. You put him up to calling me, didn’t you? I told him where to go.’

  ‘Will you just listen to me, you stubborn arse?’ Tab shouts. ‘I’m trying to make this right!’

  Sam swells up like the Incredible Hulk. I wonder if his tight shirt might rip down the back and display his famous walnut muscles for all to see.

  ‘Don’t call me an arse—’

  ‘I’ll call you an arsing arse if I want to!’ Tabby shrieks. ‘I’m sorry, OK?’

  Maria places a hand on Sam’s arm. ‘You guys need to calm down.’

  Tabby rounds on her. ‘Piss off, Barbie.’

  There is a delighted intake of breath from the goggling onlookers, Oz included.

  ‘Nice,’ says Maria coolly. She smiles up at Sam. ‘You coming?’

  ‘Well I’m not hanging around here to be called an arse again,’ Sam mutters. He looks defeated. ‘You messed this up, Tab. Live with it.’

  ‘You’re an ARSING ARSEMINSTER ABBEY!’ Tabby screams as Sam and Maria walk away down the High Street. They don’t look back.

  The crowd disperse in disappointment, leaving Oz and Tabby still standing on the steps. Oz puts his arm cautiously around Tab’s shoulders.

  ‘Good one,’ he says. ‘Arsing Arseminster Abbey.’

  Batting him off, Tab rushes down the steps. I almost fall backwards as she throws her arms around me and weeps all over my parka.

  ‘I’ve screwed up,’ she hiccups. ‘Totally and utterly screwed up. Maria’s got him now and I think I want to die.’

  I rock and soothe her, but she is inconsolable.

  ‘Let’s go and get doughnuts,’ suggests Oz. ‘Sugar’s good for shock.’

  ‘Great idea,’ I say, stroking Tab’s shuddering back. ‘You’re buying.’

  Krispy Kreme is down Water Lane, off the High Street and near the river. Oz orders a box of six and we sit at a table near the back with a wodge of serviettes from the dispenser. It isn’t long before we are surrounded by soggy paper napkins, crumbs and sugar. Tabby manages a Strawberry Gloss, leaving Oz and me to cope with the rest.

/>   ‘Your lips match your eyes now,’ says Oz as Tabby wipes strawberry icing off her mouth with a trembling finger.

  ‘Tabs, ignore the insensitive elephant across the table and listen to me,’ I instruct. ‘You have to let Sam go.

  Find something to take your mind off him. Something new and challenging. The bad stuff will pass more easily if you’re busy.’

  Tabby gazes puffily at me. ‘You mean, like do a missionary thing in Papua New Guinea?’

  ‘Maybe not quite that challenging,’ I say. ‘You’ve got to keep up your college work and I don’t think they do the same modules in Papua New Guinea.’

  ‘I can’t let Sam go!’

  ‘Of course you can. Break-ups don’t kill people.’

  I try to hold her eye while willing her not to notice the Dave-shaped shadows lurking behind my eyelashes. Oz sneaks the last doughnut.

  ‘I guess,’ Tab mumbles at last.

  I check my watch. Four forty-five. ‘I have to go. New job starts at five.’

  This seems to startle Tab out of her funk. ‘You got a job? Your life is always so together, babes,’ she sniffs. ‘Doing what?’

  Dodging a guy with North Sea eyes. ‘Pulling pints,’ I say out loud.

  ‘Can we come?’ asks Oz, rising from the table. ‘Can you get us free crisps and beer and stuff? Where is it?’

  ‘Take Tab home for me, Oz,’ I say cagily. ‘I don’t want to leave her by herself. I’ll call you in the morning, hon,’ I add, kissing my soggy mate’s salty cheek. ‘We’ll have worked out your Let Sam Go strategy by Sunday night. Totally doable.

  ‘Trust me.’

  It is an interesting evening.

  For the first forty minutes of my shift Jem keeps trying to talk to me, so I shoot off on missions I’ve suddenly ‘remembered’ Val asking me to do. Stuff like cleaning the dishwasher filter with a very small brush and colour-coordinating the wine bottles in the fridge.

  At around six-thirty, Val finds me in the cellar, where I am feather-dusting cobwebs. Her bracelets jangle as she places her hand on her denim hips.