by Della Galton
SJ didn’t believe that any more than she believed Alison had meant to put on her own ankle chain (that’s if she even had one of her own), but if they had a row about it now the evening would be spoilt before it had begun.
“Look, it doesn’t matter that much, does it?” A cajoling note had crept into Alison’s voice – she obviously knew she’d overstepped the mark. “You look fine. You’d be too hot with tights anyway.”
This was very probably true, but SJ didn’t feel any better. She’d just have to make the best of a bad situation.
“Perhaps I could keep these leggings on. What do you think?” She peered at the reflective sheet of tin that served as a mirror in the public loos, trying to decide whether the leggings were as wrinkly as they looked.
Alison snorted. “It’s up to you, but I don’t think you’re going to pull in those!”
SJ peeled them off miserably. “I haven’t even shaved my legs.”
“No one will notice,” Alison said, but SJ’s confidence, which hadn’t been high to start with, plummeted another few feet.
She cheered up slightly when they emerged from the loos and she saw her friend, Joanne, walking by, swinging four cans of lager by their thin plastic carrier.
Joanne was bare-legged in a turquoise minidress. She was bigger than SJ – a size fourteen at least – but she always looked brilliant whatever she was wearing.
“It’s confidence, babe,” she’d said when SJ had once asked her how she did it. “I just tell myself I look good, and so I do. Self-fulfilling prophecy.”
This hadn’t helped much when SJ had tried it and she’d come to the conclusion that there needed to be at least a grain of truth in the prophecy before it could become self-fulfilling, and that you really needed a smidgeon of fashion sense as well. Alison had more fashion sense than she did.
“Sarah-Jane,” Joanne shouted, spotting them and strolling across the car park. A turquoise scrunchy held back her brown hair, and some strappy gold sandals set off the dress. Her toenails were fluorescent purple. SJ’s yellow Sam and Libby flats felt suddenly out of date. She felt more self-conscious than ever as the three of them crossed the tarmac stretch of promenade to the beach.
Then, as her feet sunk into soft golden sand, SJ decided her friend had been right about this being the best beach in the country. The tide was out, and on their left a wide expanse of sand the colour of Colman’s mustard stretched towards the sea, which glittered like diamonds in the evening sun.
On their right were some of the most beautiful houses she had ever seen, some with great glass frontages to give a panoramic view of the bay and many with their own private jetties.
“Oh, to be rich,” Joanne said.
“I’m going to marry a millionaire,” Alison giggled, “who can keep me in the style to which I’d like to become accustomed.”
“You wish,” said SJ and Joanne simultaneously.
It didn’t take long to find the barbecue. They just followed the music (Janet Jackson) and the smell of frying burgers drifting across the fresh ozone tang of the sea. Clusters of people lounged about and a group of lads were playing with a beach ball on the hard sand. Lots of the girls were just wearing bikinis or minidresses, and the lads were bare-chested or in T-shirts and shorts.
“So how’s it going?” Joanne asked, flicking a quick smile at Alison as they walked towards the main throng, where someone had set up a decorating table for drinks, its legs buried to keep it stable. “Any exciting gossip you want to tell me about?” Her eyes sparkled. She was well aware of SJ’s crush on Jed.
“Not yet. Although I’m hoping I might have later.” SJ glanced around, glad of the sea breeze to cool her hot face. She couldn’t see Jed anywhere, and she knew without looking he wouldn’t be playing beach ball. He wasn’t a beach ball type of guy.
“How about you? How’s Nick?”
Joanne screwed up her face, shot a glance at Alison, who was sitting on the sand and filling a plastic cup with Thunderbird, and lowered her voice. “Not so good, to be honest. We had a row last night. Nothing new there; but the making up part was good.” She winked, and SJ smiled.
“Lucky you.”
“He’ll be down later. He went to get the burgers. Is your sister old enough to be drinking that stuff?”
“No one’s old enough to be drinking that stuff. But if I say anything it’ll just make her worse.”
“Little sisters, eh! Hey, isn’t that Jed over there?” Joanne shielded her eyes against the golden light of the evening sun and SJ followed her gaze. Way out on the hard sand, close to the creamy frill of the tide, a dark figure was sprawled on a rock. He was smoking – she could see the little breath-puffs of smoke against the pink sky – and her heart started to beat faster. Her heart knew it was him.
“Mmm, I think it is.” She pretended nonchalance but Joanne wasn’t fooled.
“He ought to have dangerous tattooed on his forehead,” Joanne said with a wry smile. She ducked to avoid a beach ball that had just whizzed past her head. “Talking of dangerous,” she muttered, frowning at the lad who’d raced after it. “Be careful with that, can’t you?”
“Sorry.” He ran past them and reached the ball at the same time as Alison, who had just bent to pick it up. She handed it up to him with a flirtatious smile and SJ saw the way he stared appreciatively at her breasts. A sigh caught in her throat. She was going to have to keep a close eye on her sister.
“Do you fancy a lager or a glass of wine?” Joanne asked. “I brought both.”
“I think I’d better stick to Coke,” SJ said. One of them had better stay sober. “I spotted some on the main table where we dropped off our BBQ stuff. Won’t be a sec.”
She was walking back towards Jo and Alison with a plastic cup of Coke when she saw that Jed was heading towards her. Smoke rose from a roll-up in his hand, which he stubbed out on the sand as he reached her.
“Hello, gorgeous.” His voice was gravel and velvet and his black eyes scanned her face, her breasts, her legs while his mouth curved in approval. “I was hoping you’d be here.”
“Were you?” Why couldn’t she think of something more intelligent to say? He was wearing faded cut-off jeans and a black Metallica T-shirt; his arms were to die for – tanned and muscular – and he was standing close enough for her to smell the scent of him: something spicy mixed with tobacco smoke and lust.
He touched her arm. Her skin shivered in response. She knew she’d feel the imprints of his fingers for weeks.
“Who’s this?” he said.
“What?” SJ turned to see her sister sashaying towards them – she must have been practising that sashay in the mirror. The sunset highlighted her hair and turned it to gold; her white top clung to her breasts (SJ realised suddenly she wasn’t wearing a bra – when had she taken that off?) and her bare midriff was satin-smooth. She looked like an angel who’d been tempted away from heaven towards the dark side.
“We’re sisters.”
“Is that so?”
Alison looked up at him from beneath her lashes. “Are you man enough to handle two women?”
Jed laughed, a little uncertainly. SJ felt her face flame. “Pack it in, Alison.” She kept her voice light and Alison giggled and then, to her relief, sauntered away towards the group who were playing beach ball.
“Sorry about that.” SJ turned back to Jed.
“No worries.” He spread his hands in front of him and smiled. He had a way of tipping back his head when he smiled. It made him look incredibly sexy. SJ’s senses swam with his nearness. She forgot about her pale, unshaven legs.
While they queued up for burgers and hot dogs, Jed kept up a stream of banter. SJ didn’t catch everything he said, partly because he had quite a strong Irish accent and partly because she was keeping an eye on what Alison was doing, but she could have listened to him all night. The texture of his voice was enough. It lilted around her, as calming as the sea. She’d always liked voices, and she liked the way he kept touching her – t
iny little pinprick touches that set her skin on fire.
As the skies darkened and the moon rose to draw its shimmering light path across the black sea, SJ began to relax. The evening was turning out better than she’d dared hope. All around her was the low buzz of mellowed-out conversation and someone was smoking a joint not far away. Someone else was strumming an acoustic guitar, its melody blending with the ancient rhythm of the sea.
Alison was playing beach ball with the group of lads – they’d got progressively more rowdy, but what the heck, you were only young once. SJ could have forgiven anyone anything at that moment. Jed was being very attentive.
His glances were getting more lingering, his touches more daring. Considering his reputation, he was taking things very slowly. SJ was enjoying it without overtly encouraging him. She didn’t want him to think she was easy, but she didn’t want him to think she wasn’t interested either. The last time they’d met she’d been on a girls’ night out and he’d bought her a drink, but the club had been too noisy for much chat and although they’d flirted he hadn’t asked for her number.
“Word is that he was seeing someone at the time but it wasn’t serious,” Joanne had told her afterwards. “He’s finished with her now.”
SJ didn’t know if the ‘finishing’ had anything to do with her, but she did know that Jed was going to kiss her soon. Every atom of her body tingled with anticipation.
“Another cup of wine, Sarah-Jane?” The way he said her name was glorious. They were half sitting, half lying on the sand. Their shadows had already merged and become one. A prelude to the moment SJ knew was on the horizon, the moment they would touch each other, skin against skin, for the first splintering, diamond-bright time.
Jed leant across her to refill her plastic cup. In the same instant her face was sprinkled with cold water. SJ jumped and sat up. “What on earth…?”
Alison’s drunken giggle smashed into the moment. “Are you coming skinny-dipping, sis? It’s fan-taaaa-stic.” She shook out her hair, showering SJ and Jed with another volley of freezing droplets, and her towel, which wasn’t really big enough to cover her, slipped to expose one breast.
With a mixture of embarrassment and alarm SJ realised that a) Alison wasn’t wearing anything beneath her towel and b) she was completely pissed.
Furious, she stood up. She wasn’t sure exactly what she intended to do, but Alison darted away from her, stumbled on the soft sand and went sprawling.
“Oops,” she called, and burst into another fit of giggling.
“I think your sister needs a bigger towel,” Jed observed, leaning back on his elbows and doing nothing about finding one. He wasn’t alone. Several other people were now looking in Alison’s direction, the girls with disapproval, the lads with blatant interest. Alison rolled over, let go of the towel altogether and rubbed her face with her hands.
“I’ve got sand in my eyes.”
SJ scouted around frantically for Alison’s rucksack, but Joanne beat her to it. She was coming across with a beach towel, arms outstretched. SJ shot her a grateful glance as they both crouched beside Alison, shielding her with their bodies, while Joanne slipped the beach towel around her narrow shoulders. Alison was still rubbing her eyes. She’d gone very white.
“For God’s sake,” SJ remonstrated. “How much have you drunk?”
“Hardly any,” Alison said, and promptly threw up on the sand.
SJ wasn’t sure exactly when Jed slipped away into the moon-drenched night. It could have been at that point, or it could have been later on, when she was helping Alison to rinse her face under the cold tap on the prom. Either way, she was pretty sure she wouldn’t see him again. Part of her ached with disappointment. She’d had such high hopes: he was so darkly beautiful, and she’d had the sense they were on the brink of something special. But a larger part of her was worried about Alison, who had been spectacularly ill several times.
SJ had forced her to drink lots of cups of water and someone had given her a couple of Paracetamol. One guy had commented that it was disgusting drinking yourself into such a state – and Alison was obviously an alcoholic in the making – and another of her more helpful friends had laughed and suggested Alison should sleep it off. But SJ daren’t take her home until she’d sobered up. Dad would go spare and Mum would probably cry, and she would almost certainly get the blame.
Now, a couple of hours later, everyone but SJ, Alison and Joanne had drifted off home. The three of them were sitting in a line on the concrete steps that separated the prom from the beach.
“Thank you,” SJ said to Joanne, who was pouring black coffee from a Thermos flask into a cup and handing it to Alison.
“I don’t like coffee,” Alison grumbled, but at least – finally – there was some colour back in her cheeks.
“Where’s Nick?” SJ asked. “Is he giving you a lift home?”
Joanne shook back her mop of brown hair. “We had another row earlier,” she said ruefully. “And he stormed off, silly bugger.” Her voice was light, but SJ could see she was more upset than she was letting on.
“I’m really sorry.” She edged along the step and slipped an arm around Joanne’s plump shoulders.
“I’m not. I won’t be wasting any tears on Naff Nick.” The slight wobble in her voice betrayed her and for a while they sat quietly listening to the eternal swish of waves against the shore as the black sea inched its way back up the beach.
“How are you going to get home then?” SJ said at last, deciding it might be better to concentrate on practicalities.
“I’ll have to ring my stepdad.” Joanne didn’t sound very keen at the prospect. SJ knew she didn’t get on with her stepdad. “I think I’ve missed the last bus.”
“Oh, don’t bother him, Jo. We can share a taxi – we’ve got to get back to the station anyway.”
“That’s in the opposite direction,” Joanne pointed out. “Don’t worry. If I can’t get hold of him, I can hitch. I haven’t got any money anyway.”
“I have,” SJ said, trying not to think of the dress in Next. “We can drop you off on the way.”
As they slowly headed back along the sand dusted promenade Alison spoke for the first time in ages. “What happened with that bloke you fancied? Couldn’t we scrounge a lift home with him?”
“He left hours ago,” SJ said, amazed that in all the kerfuffle she had managed to push Jed out of her mind. But now he was back he wasn’t so easy to shift. The night breeze goose-bumped her skin and she swallowed an ache of regret that was suddenly fathoms deep.
“Do you think it was your legs that put him off?” Alison contemplated SJ’s legs with a frown. “I suppose they do look a bit hairy, but they’re not that bad in the dark.”
SJ stared at her, open-mouthed, but before she could think of a stinging enough retort, Alison went on breezily, “He was pretty full of himself anyway, wasn’t he? If you ask me, you’re better off without him.”
Chapter Thirteen
Would it have altered the course of history if she’d told Alison how hurt she had really felt that night? Or if she had told their mother about Alison’s drunken skinny-dipping instead of keeping quiet? Would Alison have thought more about the consequences of her actions if she’d been punished?
When they’d argued about it afterwards Alison had finally confessed that she’d drunk too much because she felt left out.
“You were off laughing and chatting with your mates – and getting chatted up by that gorgeous bloke – and I was just sitting on my own, bored.”
SJ didn’t remember it quite like that but she’d given her sister the benefit of the doubt. Even so, the memory of Jed and what might have been was a raw spot on her psyche for several weeks. For a while she hoped he might contact her – they hadn’t exchanged numbers, but they had mutual friends. Then she saw him in town with a really pretty girl on his arm. She’d pretended not to notice them and had walked swiftly in the opposite direction. And slowly the bittersweet regret had faded away.
/> Eighteen months later, in the canteen at university, she had met Derek Anderson. She’d been sitting at a table in the corner, immersed in a copy of Hello, and had barely glanced up when he approached and said softly, “Is it okay if I sit with you?”
“Sure.”
“I’m not a student,” he added, and now she did look up, a little irritated at this further interruption. Couldn’t he see she was busy?
Her first impression was that he was quite ordinary-looking. Brown hair, brown eyes, and not terribly good skin.
“I’m working undercover for the Drugs Squad. You won’t give me away, will you?”
His face was deadly serious and she frowned – she supposed it could have been true. There was always a drugs problem in universities – well, there was according to the papers. She hadn’t noticed anyone doing anything untoward, apart from smoking the odd joint, which hardly counted. All students smoked dope. She did it herself at parties and had the odd line of speed if she wanted to stay up all night.
“See that guy over there – the one with the John Lennon glasses and the moustache? Don’t make it obvious you’re looking,” he warned. “I don’t want him to know we’re on to him. That piece of low life is the main supplier of crack cocaine to this campus. You wouldn’t believe how many innocent lives he’s destroyed.”
As far as SJ could tell – without making it obvious she was looking, of course – the bloke he’d indicated was Jack Watson, editor of the uni magazine and reputed to be in line for a high flying career in his father’s Fleet Street paper.
“Pull the other one, it’s got bells on,” she muttered. “Everyone knows he wouldn’t touch drugs with a barge pole.” Hmm, rather a surplus of clichés for someone studying English literature, but she’d been too taken aback to think of anything clever.
“Very good cover, I’ll grant you.” Derek looked deep into her eyes in a way that was both off-putting and unnervingly sexy. “Do me a favour and walk out of here with me. Just act natural, like we’re talking about an assignment or something. I’d really, really appreciate it.”