Oz looks relieved. ‘Just put in a good word for me with Tabby whenever you can.’
He still hasn’t got the message, bless him. ‘All the words in the world won’t make her fancy you,’ I say as kindly as I can.
‘Humour me.’
He leaves. I squeeze my arms in at the bar and order a bottle of something blue because everyone around me seems to be drinking it. It tastes vile, but it is free and gives me something to do with my hands. It’s weird standing here by myself. I smile tentatively at a couple of people, but they look right through me and carry on with their conversations. Glancing around the room, I try singling out familiar faces, people I can barge up to and join. Several from college – a number from school –
And Louise.
Blood thunders to my face. Dave’s girlfriend is standing moodily in a corner by the dance floor. I flick my eyes around like a rat in a trap. If Louise is here . . .
‘What the hell is that mouthwash?’
With her hair caught up on top of her head and her face painted like an extremely beautiful tiger, the angry redhead from bodypainting – Ella – is beside me, looking aggressively at my bottle.
‘I don’t know,’ I say, unable to say much else. I am relieved to be having a conversation with someone, but
my brain is clattering around my head in clogs. ‘Tastes terrible though.’
‘I saw Kev on the door,’ she says. ‘He said you were here. Jem with you?’
I shake my head. How quickly can I get out of here? I haven’t seen Dave yet, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t lurking.
Ella takes a moody glug from a can of lager she’s holding. ‘He wasn’t at the collective tonight. I thought he took his art seriously. Seems I was wrong.’
‘He does take it seriously.’ I can feel myself going cross-eyed with the effort of looking at Ella and scoping out the bar for Dave at the same time. ‘He wants to make a career of it. Do films.’
‘So why wasn’t he there tonight?’
She glares at me as if Jem’s absence was my fault.
‘Why should I know?’ I demand, fed up with the interrogation already.
Seeing a tiger laugh rates pretty high on the freakometer. ‘Sorry, I don’t mean to take it out on you,’ she says. ‘Delilah, right? Next time you see him, give him a kick from me. If he’s serious about this, he can’t miss sessions.’
Louise is approaching the bar. To my horror, Ella is beckoning her over. They know each other. Sometimes I hate this town.
I finish my drink and put the bottle down. ‘I have to—’
It’s too late.
‘Lou, you remember Jem?’ Ella says. ‘In our year, completely gorgeous when he bothered to show up? This is his girlfriend Delilah.’
As introductions to your ex-boyfriend’s girlfriend go, it isn’t bad. Deciding not to correct Ella on the girlfriend bit, I start breathing more normally and try to act like I get introduced this way all the time. Louise runs her almond-shaped eyes up and down my dress.
‘Hi,’ she says coolly.
The giddy combination of adrenalin and blue stuff kick me in the head. ‘No need to pretend we don’t know each other,’ I say. I lean towards Ella conversationally. ‘I used to go out with Louise’s boyfriend by mistake.’
Louise bursts into noisy tears that run down her perfect brown cheeks and smear her mascara. Ella looks from me to Louise and back again with a combination of interest and glee. And it suddenly occurs to me that perhaps I’m not the only one who’s been put through the emotional mangle by the D-word. All these leaps of self-knowledge are a bit dizzying.
‘I am so sorry,’ I say, appalled. ‘I didn’t mean to make you—’
‘He dumped me a couple of days ago.’ Louise takes the serviette Ella is proffering and blows her nose. ‘I put up with a row of little tarts like you and now he’s dumped me like . . .’ She looks at the snotty serviette and chucks it down on the bar in disgust.
‘This is awkward,’ Ella drawls.
I don’t know how to feel about this astonishing piece of information. Horrified? Embarrassed? Ecstatic?
Louise looks at me with loathing, then heads for the toilets as fast as her maddeningly long legs allow,
stumbling across the dance floor with one hand held to her face. Something I never thought I’d ever say rises to my lips.
‘Do you think Louise is OK?’
Ella snorts. ‘Call me psychic, but I’m guessing not. Boys spread misery wherever they go. Girls are where it’s at, Delilah, believe me.’
When Ella turns her tiger-striped face towards the bar, I am off like a hare on a dogtrack.
‘Going already?’
I summon a smile for Kev on the door, smoke issuing from the heels of my Vans. ‘Somewhere else to be. Say bye to Oz for me.’
My brain is bouncing with impossible speed from one thought to another. What’s happened between Dave and Louise? Has he met someone else? After several lacerating seconds of jealousy, I indulge in fantasies of being the cause.
I move on. Why haven’t I heard from Jem? Should I be worried that he didn’t turn up to his bodypainting thing? I give myself a mental kicking even as I feel the pulse of Saturday night in my guts. I ran from the theatre because I was scared. I’m a coward.
How do I feel now? How does he feel? He doesn’t feel like calling me, I know that much. Maybe he didn’t do his bodypainting thing because of me too. But that’s laughable. Then because . . . because . . . I have no idea.
The clerk on the thought counter shouts ‘NEXT!’
Money. How to get it. How to survive on it. Always money. I hate the stuff. No one ever warns you how hard independence can be.
My phone rings, bringing some relief. I take it out – and stop, my answering thumb in mid-air. The screen is telling me something I can’t quite believe. A name I haven’t seen on my phone since the day I bought a new one. A new one which was washed into the Med and has since been replaced by the old one again, complete with old contacts still in place.
I hit the green button and lift it to my ear. ‘Dave?’
‘Hey, babe. How’s it going?’
I am incapable of small talk. My heart rate is off the scale. ‘What do you want?’ I manage.
‘No need to be unfriendly.’
‘What do you want please, Dave?’
‘You know,’ he says after a moment. ‘A chat.’
‘A chat,’ I repeat. ‘What do you want to chat about?’
‘Stuff.’
‘Why now?’ I am clutching the phone so tightly I can feel my knuckles seizing up. ‘Why, specifically, do you want to chat about stuff now?’
‘You busy?’
I’m going to hang up. I am.
‘I heard about you and Louise,’ I blurt.
‘Who told you?’
‘Louise did. Just now. At the Fire Station. Is it true?’
‘You at the Fire Station now?’
I hold the receiver away from my ear, wave it at the silent streetlit world, then return it to the side of my head. ‘Doesn’t sound like it, does it?’
‘You with anyone?’
‘You still haven’t said what you want to talk about.’
He is silent.
‘Chat time’s over,’ I say.
‘Don’t hang up,’ he replies quickly. ‘Can you meet me? Now?’
I feel his question like a kebab skewer through my stomach. ‘No,’ I say, and turn off my phone.
I shake for the last ten minutes home. My world is a box of matches, scattered in one mindless I-opened-it-upside-down moment.
He is waiting in his car at the end of my road as I turn in, one elbow hanging out of the driver’s window. His face looks thinner, his blond hair longer. It doesn’t suit him.
‘What are you doing here?’ I implore.
He drums his badly bitten fingernails on the side of the car. ‘Good to see you too. What’s the Fire Station – forty minutes from here? I guessed you were walking so figured I’d wait till you showed up.’
Too confused for anything else, I walk slowly round to where he’s popped open the passenger door and slide inside. The familiar smell of the car assails me. Vinyl, motor oil, hash. He moves to kiss me.
‘Don’t,’ I say sharply.
Shrugging, he starts the engine.
I reach over and pull the car key out of the ignition. ‘Don’t do that either. We’re not going anywhere. Why
are you here?’
He takes his time answering me, patting his pockets for something. Now I can see him up close, he doesn’t look good. His eyes are red, his skin patchy. Pulling out a ciggie, he lights it and inhales.
‘I’m sorry I messed you around,’ he says. ‘That’s what I wanted to say.’
‘Oh,’ I say. ‘Well, I’m pretty sorry too. But it’s over now. I’m over it.’
There is a pause.
‘You got a job at that theatre, Studs says.’
‘And?’
‘Nothing. Just – that’s cool.’
We sit in silence as he smokes. I am feeling increasingly bewildered.
‘You’re better off without me,’ he says after a while, gazing out of the windscreen. ‘So’s she. Louise.’
He is starting to weird me out. ‘Is this some kind of verbal suicide note, Dave, or are you angling to write
for Hollyoaks?’
‘You always were funny,’ he says, with a half-smile.
He flicks the filter out of the window and, reaching over, opens the passenger door again for me. I flatten myself to the seat so as little of me touches as little of him as possible.
‘That’s it?’ I say, looking from him to the open car door and back again.
He lifts his car keys from my hand. ‘Thanks. You know, for listening.’
Mystified, I stand on the pavement and watch him drive off, his rear lights boring into me like a pair of red-rimmed eyes after a heavy night.
‘Delilah?’
I rouse myself from stupor. ‘Hmm?’
‘You’re up.’
I shuffle my papers slowly. Jem and Dave have been popping in and out of my head in turn like crazed cuckoo clocks.
‘Er,’ I say, looking at the class. ‘I’m here to talk about cuckoos. Sorry, what? Not cuckoos, I’m here to talk
about Keynes.’
‘I’d prefer to hear about cuckoos,’ says a girl on the front, through the wave of laughter rippling through the room.
‘Keynes,’ I repeat. My flipping toes are blushing. ‘John Maynard Keynes. Maynard like the wine gums.’
More laughter.
‘Cuckoos and wine gums aren’t the most orthodox way to start a presentation on one of Britain’s most important economists,’ says the teacher. ‘Does this get better?’
Everything goes out of my head. My pile of notes might be written in Urdu for all I understand. The only thing I can think of is Jem saying Interesting guy, if massive moustaches and the cause of a boom-and-bust economy are your bag.
‘He was gay,’ I say hopelessly.
The teacher sighs. ‘You’ve had two weeks to get this ready, Delilah. We’ll discuss it after class. Sit down.’
I sit and stare at my pile of papers, my little Post-its marking bits that I was most proud of. I even have photos.
At the end of the class, I thrust my perfectly serviceable presentation at the teacher and flee for the canteen, not daring to look back at his puzzled face.
‘That was like a car crash in there,’ Oz says, catching up. ‘What happened?’
‘My brain died,’ I say shortly. ‘And I saw my ex-boyfriend last night. It’s safe to say that the two things aren’t unconnected.’
Oz rubs his eyes. ‘Give me details but keep it low. My head’s like a brick today.’
‘Buy me a sandwich first?’ I implore.
Oz coughs up for a BLT that I want to kiss him for. ‘Why are you so broke all the time?’ he says at the till. ‘I thought you had a job.’
I’ll be seeing Jem tonight – talking to Jem tonight – for the first time since running out on him in the darkness of the theatre. I am beyond scared.
‘I do,’ I sigh. ‘But it comes at a cost.’
Tabby waves us over from a table in the corner. I’ve hardly sat down before I am wolfing the BLT like a starving dog.
‘Patricia and Eunice told Warren off for pestering me at rehearsal last night,’ she says gleefully.
‘Dave’s not going out with Louise any more,’ I say, when the sandwich has gone and I can draw breath. ‘And I saw him last night and he was weird.’
‘And Maria and Sam rowed,’ Tab goes on. ‘I did the song where I sing and flirt with Warren, which is the hardest thing in the world because he grosses me out so totally – and I think their row happened straight afterwards so like, maybe I was the cause?’
‘And I’m now totally confused,’ I groan.
‘I love how girls talk AT each other,’ says Oz.
‘What?’ Tab and I say to one another at the same time.
‘Dave,’ I repeat. ‘I saw him. The long-term girlfriend I caught him with? I saw her too. They split up. Talk about confusing.’
‘Delilah,’ Tab says, ‘Dave was a two-timing rat. What’s confusing about that?’
I fix her with a meaningful stare. ‘Jem hasn’t called me so he’s obviously not interested.’ This hurts, but I have to put it out there because it’s true. ‘Dave on the other hand did call me. Maybe he broke up with Louise because of me.’
‘You haven’t seen the guy in months. Why would he do that?’
‘It’s still a maybe,’ I say stubbornly.
‘You don’t want to get back with him, do you?’ says Tabby disbelievingly.
I don’t know what I want. Oh, hold on – yes I do. I want a world back where everything makes sense.
‘You want Sam to forgive you for cheating on him,’ I protest.
‘One kiss is totally different! You were in a relationship.’
‘This is like watching a tennis match,’ Oz says. ‘Only without a replay button.’
‘I’ll talk to Oz if you’re going to be unhelpful about this, Tabby,’ I say, annoyed. ‘Oz, if a guy is interested, they
call you, right? And boys have been known to dump current girlfriends for old girlfriends but not tell them right away, right?’
‘Oz,’ says Tabby. ‘Do guys row with their girlfriends about their ex-girlfriends when they see their ex-girlfriends flirting with weirdos even though they’re all just acting?’
Oz looks flummoxed. ‘All of a sudden I hold the key to the Holy Grail of Guy Thinking? The only relationship I’ve had lately that’s lasted to its natural conclusion is between me and a packet of Doritos.’
‘You’re no use,’ I say crossly.
A girl stops at our table. ‘Hey, Oz! Great party last night.’
Oz blossoms like a flower. ‘I like to spread the love. Do you like to spread the love? Do you want to spread some in my direction?’
But she’s already gone. Oz looks despondent and eats more crisps.
‘Lilah, we’re rehearsing in the bar tonight because they’re set-building in the auditorium,’ Tab tells me. ‘You can watch during your shift and tell me what you think is going on between Sam and Maria. You’re always giving me stuff to do to take my mind off Sam. I’m returning the favour with you and Jem.’
‘I don’t need my mind taking off Jem,’ I say. Hasn’t she been listening? ‘I need my mind taki
ng off Dave.’
‘Whatever. Just watch. Eyes on stalks. Read the signs. Tell me afterwards. Yes?’
‘I’d come to offer moral support, only I’m busy,’ says Oz with his nose in his phone. ‘The gigs just keep coming.’
‘Will you watch Maria and Sam tonight?’ Tab prompts me. ‘Please?’
I am feeling forgiving after the BLT. I can be cool, non-committal, occupy my downtime observing Sam and Maria and pondering the conundrum of Dave. Act totally cool around Jem.
‘No problem,’ I say with firm resolve. ‘No problem at all.’
‘What do you mean, he’s not here?’
Val shrugs. ‘We’ll just have to manage with two of us tonight.’
I feel ridiculously angry. All afternoon I’ve been psyching myself up to this. All through study period I was going over how I’d say hello, right through to something funny about the side-squirting optic. I put on make-up in the college toilets, and washed it off again, and put it on again. And he’s not here?
I try to catch Tab’s eye, but she and Eunice are setting out chairs. Warren is talking to Sam with his eyes on Maria’s breasts. The other cast members are milling around the lobby like sheep in a high wind, trying to find places to sit down.
‘IF we can begin,’ says Desmond the director with a loud cough.
‘So where is he?’ I ask Val.
She raises her hands. ‘I haven’t seen him for a couple of days.’
‘Was he here last night?’
‘I haven’t seen him for a couple of days,’ Val repeats patiently.
‘So you don’t know where he is?’ I persist. ‘He hasn’t called?’
‘He’s eighteen, love,’ Val says, rubbing her temples with both hands. ‘He can do what he wants. But I’ll tell you this. When he does turn up, I’ll box his ears off the sides of his head.’
Several punters drift in, look at the assembled chairs and people, assess Honor at the piano in one corner and Desmond the director’s waving arms, and disappear into the street again. Only a few of the regulars run the gauntlet of the close-harmony singing, retiring to a corner of the bar to watch over the tops of their pints.
The Kiss Page 12