Passion Flower

by Jean Ure

  “All on your own?” said Skinny. He leant over, and the beard waggled at me. I hate beards! “Been abandoned?”

  I shook my head, very frenziedly, to and fro.

  “No?” Skinny studied me, and waggled his beard again. He seemed friendly enough, but you can’t trust men with beards. I knew this, because Vix had told me so. She had read it somewhere. (They grow beards to hide things.) “You looked a bit lost,” he said, “that’s all. I take it you belong to someone? Are you here with your mum and dad?”

  Heavens! He thought I was a child. He was checking whether I would be missed if he made off with me. I gasped, “No, I’m – with my boyfriend. He’ —” I flapped a hand in the direction in which I had seen Zed disappearing. “He’s over there! I’ve got to… get him!”

  I shot off across the room. I expect it probably sounds quite pathetic, but I was really scared. I wasn’t scared that the skinny beard man was actually going to make off with me, because if he tried it I would scream the place down. Someone would notice. Wouldn’t they? They couldn’t all be drunk! I mean, some of them had to stay sober so they could drive home.

  If they were going home. If it wasn’t the sort of party where they all crashed out and didn’t come to until the following day. I think that’s what I was really scared of. Having to spend the night with all these druggy people! I was sure most of them were on something. Ecstasy or something. Zed could be, for all I knew. Boys from posh schools were always being busted for drugs. He was probably zonked out of his skull right now. If only Frankie hadn’t been so unpleasant! If she’d just taken me to one side and said, “Look, Passion, you can’t fool me! I know you’re only fourteen. You really don’t want to come to this party.” Well, I might just have listened. Instead, she’d sneered and jeered and tried to make me feel stupid. It was her fault!

  I knew it wasn’t, really. But I was just so frightened! I was thinking of all the movies I’d seen (movies that Mum hadn’t wanted me to watch but Dad had always let me) where innocent young girls had drugs pumped into them and became helpless addicts living on the street, or died hideous contorted deaths, rolling their eyes and frothing at the mouth.

  I blundered through a press of bodies and into the hall. I’d got to get away! I’d got to get back home! Someone grabbed me by the arm and I let out a yell.

  “Passion?” It was Chaz. Chaz and the others! “Where’s Zed? We’re leaving.”

  The minute he said that, my heart stopped hammering, the bullets stopped pounding. Great waves of relief washed over me. I said, apologetically, that I wasn’t sure where Zed was.

  “I think he went to find some more booze.”

  “Oh, God!” said Chaz. Paige rolled her eyes.

  “You stay here,” said Nick. “We’ll go and find him.”

  “Well, just hurry!” said Frankie. “We don’t want to miss the last train.”

  Nervously, I said, “W-when is the last train?”

  “Twenty-five after midnight,” said Frankie. “Way past your bedtime,” she added.

  Paige said, “Shut up, Frankie!”

  “Well, she shouldn’t have come, I’m not taking responsibility for her. It’s up to Zed.”

  “Zed couldn’t take responsibility for a paper bag,” said Paige.

  Like Dad, I thought. Zed was just a younger version of Dad! He was doing to me what Dad had done to Mum. All of their married lives Dad had behaved irresponsibly; Mum had never been able to rely on him. He’d spent money they didn’t have, he’d made promises he didn’t keep, he’d just always, always let her down. The same as Zed had done to me!

  I wondered miserably if it were true, what Vix had once told me (something she’d read in a magazine) that girls often fell for boys who reminded them of their dads. It certainly seemed to be what I’d done. Well! I’d learnt my lesson. Next time I would make sure I chose someone solid and boring and responsible. I didn’t want this happening again! Chaz and Nick came back, dragging Zed with them. Zed cried, “Hi! There’s Passion!” and launched himself in my direction but fell headlong before he could reach me. Nick grabbed him just in time. “Passion, Passion!” cried Zed. “Where have you been all this time?”

  It was quite embarrassing. I don’t think I will ever take up drink.

  We got to the station just two minutes before the train was due. It didn’t get in to Brighton until gone one o’clock! I’d never in my life been out so late all by myself. Without Mum or Dad, that is. Paige said, “Don’t you think you ought to ring someone and tell them you’re on your way?”

  I tried ringing Dad, but there wasn’t any reply. I knew what had happened: Dad hadn’t re-charged his mobile. He’d got a new battery for it, but he didn’t always remember that it needed re-charging.

  “No one there?” said Paige, sounding surprised.

  I explained about Dad forgetting to re-charge.

  “Don’t you have a land line?” said Frankie.

  I thought she said landmine. Bewildered, I said, “What’s a landmine?”

  Zed chortled. “Something you tread on and it blows you to smithereens!”

  No one took any notice of him. Frankie, speaking very slowly and deliberately, as if I were half-witted, said, “Land LINE.”

  “An ordinary phone,” said Paige.

  “Oh! No, we don’t have one of those,” I said.

  So then they all looked at me like I was some kind of alien. All except Zed, who was still sniggering to himself.

  Suddenly, more than anything else on earth, I wanted to be home. Really home. Back in Nottingham, with Mum! I didn’t care if Nottingham was dull and boring. I didn’t care if Mum fretted and fussed and treated me like a child. I wanted to be treated like a child! I wanted to be fussed over! I would have given anything to hear Mum laying down her rules and regulations. Don’t talk to strangers. Don’t get into cars… don’t go off to wild parties with boys you don’t know!

  I had thought I was so grown up. I had tried so hard to be cool and mature. All I’d succeeded in doing was frightening myself.

  I felt ashamed, afterwards. When I looked back on it I felt that I’d behaved like a stupid baby. After all, what had happened? Nothing! No one had tried to abduct me, or have their way with me, or force me into taking drugs. There was a girl in my class at school, Rhiannon O’Donnell, who went to parties like that all the time. Or so she claimed. Maybe she did. She’d started going with boys when she was only eleven. I hadn’t gone out with a boy till I was thirteen! I decided, sadly, that in spite of looking mature I was obviously extremely young for my age. Vix, too! Because when I told her about the party she said that she couldn’t have handled it, either. She said it was nice that we could admit these things to each other.

  “Instead of just boasting, you know?”

  I wished Vix could have been there with me, on the train that night. I wouldn’t have felt so alone and so insecure. I knew that I was a nuisance, and that the others felt responsible for me. Not Zed, who was the one who had brought me. Zed was well out of it. But Paige and the two boys. Paige said they couldn’t let me go home on my own, and Chaz and Nick agreed. Frankie just pulled a face. I knew what she was thinking… I told you so! I was grateful to Paige as I would have been really nervous of walking home by myself.

  It was gone quarter-past one when I arrived back. I thought for sure Dad would be worried about me. Even Dad! I imagined him trying to ring me and discovering that his mobile wasn’t charged. I braced myself for angry cries of “Stephanie! What time of night do you call this?” Instead, I found Dad slumped on the sofa, fast asleep, with the telly still blasting away. I wondered whether to simply turn it off and creep past into the bedroom, but before I could do so Dad suddenly opened his eyes and said, “Steph? That you? I must have drifted off!” Then he sat up and stretched and said, “Had a good evening?”

  I don’t think he even noticed what time it was.

  “HEY! STEPHANIE!” THE Afterthought shot up the bed and pummelled me into wakefulness. I opened a re
luctant eye.

  “Wozza time?”

  “Nearly seven o’clock!”

  “Too early! Go back to sleep.”

  “I can’t, I’m awake!”

  “Well, I’m not. Leave me alone!” I punched, irritably, at the pillow. “I didn’t get to bed till half-past one.”

  “I know. I tried waiting up for you, but I fell asleep – and that was after midnight!” The Afterthought bounced, and my head went bang, thud, wallop. “I want to hear about the party! Tell me about the party! Was it good?”

  I grunted.

  “What did you do? Did you dance? Did the Alphabet person kiss you? Did you enjoy it?”

  I said, “Yes, it was fun.” And then I, too, catapulted up the bed. “Actually,” I said, “it was horrid! I wished I hadn’t gone.”

  The Afterthought stared at me, her eyes wide. “Why? What was horrid about it?”

  “Everything! The people – Zed. He got drunk. And I’m sure there were drugs. It was scary, ‘cos they were all heaps older than me, and –” I hugged my knees to my chest “– we didn’t stay at the first party, we went on to another one in Croydon, and Zed wouldn’t come home, and —”

  “Where’s Croydon?” said the Afterthought.

  “I don’t know! Somewhere. On the train. Miles away. And I didn’t have my ticket, Zed had it, and I didn’t know how to get to the station, and it was really late and I thought Dad would be so worried.”

  “Dad never worries,” said the Afterthought. “Mum would have done.”

  “Mum would never have let me go in the first place,” I said.

  “No.”

  We fell silent, thinking about it. The Afterthought sat back on her heels, looking like a little plump elf in her nightie. For some reason, I don’t know why, I suddenly felt fond of her.

  “I don’t think I ought to have gone,” I said. “I don’t think Dad should have let me.”

  The Afterthought put her thumb in her mouth and sucked at it.

  I said, “Dad lets us do all kinds of things he shouldn’t.”

  “Like what?” said the Afterthought, through a mouthful of thumb.

  “Like watching stuff on telly that Mum would say wasn’t suitable. Like eating junk food every day. Like driving in the front seat of the car without a seat belt!”

  “Mm. But it is nice being here with Dad,” said the Afterthought. She scrambled out of bed, scooped up Titch from a pile of clothes, and jumped back into bed again. Titch immediately started purring, and kneading with his claws. “If we hadn’t come to stay with Dad,” said the Afterthought, “we wouldn’t have had a kitten.”

  “Would you still like to stay with him all the time?” I said.

  The Afterthought considered the question, her head to one side. “Most of the time,” she said.

  “What’s that mean?”

  “It means I’d stay with Dad in the holidays, ‘cos it’s more fun with Dad, but I’d stay with Mum during term.”

  “Then you’d be with Mum longer than you would with Dad,” I said.

  The Afterthought frowned. “Maybe Mum could come and live in Brighton. That’d be best! Then we could live with either of them, depending how we felt.”

  “So if we felt like having a good time we’d stay with Dad, and if we felt like being looked after we’d go and stay with Mum.”

  “Something like that,” said the Afterthought. “But Mum would have to come and live in Brighton. We couldn’t keep going up to Nottingham.”

  I said, “Why don’t you dream that Dad might win the lottery while you’re about it?”

  “‘Cos he says the chances of winning the lottery are even worse than… something to do with horse racing that I couldn’t understand,” said the Afterthought.

  “Yes,” I said, “and the chances of Mum coming to live in Brighton are about nine million to one, so you can forget that idea!”

  “In that case, I’ll stay with Dad,” said the Afterthought; but she didn’t sound quite as bullish about it as she had before. I felt she was just saying it.

  I wondered what I was going to say to Vix, about the party. Unfortunately I had already sent her a card telling her that I was going, otherwise I would probably just have said nothing at all. I knew she wouldn’t forget about it as I’d made this really big thing of it. I suppose I’d boasted, just a little. Zed has asked me to a party! She’d be breathlessly waiting to hear what it was like.

  I didn’t want to lie to her and say it had been brilliant, because if you lie to your best friend it is almost like lying to yourself; and besides, I had this feeling that once I was back home – because we were going back home. We had to! – I might want to talk about it with her. On the other hand, I didn’t want to admit that I had been a baby and a scaredy cat and a total wimp as I thought she might meet up with Anje or Heidi (our other two friends from school) and just casually mention that “Poor old Steph’s been to a horrible druggy party and frightened herself!” and then it would be all round everywhere in next to no time ‘cos Anje and Heidi are two of the biggest goss-mongers around. I wouldn’t want people like Rhiannon getting to hear of it!

  In the end, I just sort of fluffed.

  I also did a postcard for Mum.

  I suppose I was being a bit sneaky, telling Mum all about the party and about not getting home till one o’clock. I didn’t want to get Dad into trouble – though I thought it probably wouldn’t matter, now that he and Mum were separated. After all, Mum couldn’t do anything to him. She couldn’t throw any more frying pans – but I did want Mum to get rattled. I wanted her to fly into one of her panics and snatch up the phone and ring me and say, “Stephanie! I’m catching the first plane back. I want you and your sister to come home immediately!”

  I wasn’t certain how long it took a postcard to get to Spain. A day or two, maybe? I imagined that Mum would probably ring on either Wednesday or Thursday, and I thought that I would keep my mobile with me at all times and make sure (unlike Dad) that the battery was always charged.

  Monday morning, Zed rang. He said, “Hi, Passion! Enjoy the party?” Just as if nothing had ever happened! As if he had never had too much to drink and got silly and refused to take me home. But I am such a coward, I didn’t say anything. I just meekly mumbled, “Yeah, it was great.” The Afterthought, who was sitting on the floor nearby, playing with Titch, looked at me and pulled a face. I pulled one back and whisked myself away into the bedroom. When I came out, a few minutes later, the Afterthought said, “Are you going to see him again?”

  I didn’t tell her to mind her own business. She wasn’t being nosy; it was just sisterly concern. I said, “No. I told him we’d got to go somewhere with Dad.”

  “Suppose he sees you?” said the Afterthought.

  “He won’t,” I said.

  “He might, if we go into town.”

  “So we won’t go into town! We’ll stop indoors.”

  “But there’s no food,” wailed the Afterthought.

  I said in that case we would sneak out and buy some and bring it back with us. The Afterthought liked that idea. She said she didn’t particularly want to go out, anyway, because of Titch.

  “He’d get lonely, by himself.”

  I pointed out that people left cats by themselves all the time, but the Afterthought said not when they were just tiny kittens.

  “I wouldn’t mind if he had a catty friend… we ought to have got two!”

  “You’ll be lucky if Mum lets you keep one,” I said.

  “Not going back to Mum,” muttered the Afterthought.

  I did wish she would stop saying it! It was starting to make me nervous. It worried me that it was such ages since Mum had last rung. It worried me that she’d told Dad she only wanted to be contacted in emergencies. If only I’d asked her about it, last time we’d spoken! But I’d been too busy telling her about all the things we were doing. The Afterthought was convinced that Mum had washed her hands of us.

  “She doesn’t want us any more! She’s giv
en us to Dad.”

  But I still refused to believe it. Mum wouldn’t do such a thing! She just needed a break, without having to consider other people for once in her life. By the end of the holiday she’d be back to normal. At least, that was what I told myself. But every time the Afterthought muttered about “not going back” little niggling doubts began worming their way in.

  The one time I’d tried asking Dad, he’d just told me that I worried too much; there didn’t seem much point asking him again. Also, I think perhaps I was a bit scared of what he might say, I mean, in case things might have changed. I thought what he would probably say would be, “Hang loose, Honeybun! Don’t get yourself in a lather.” But suppose he didn’t? Suppose he said the Afterthought was right? I couldn’t cope with that! I didn’t want to know.

  So I told the Afterthought to just shut up – which somewhat to my surprise she did, which was a bit worrying in itself – and dragged her off down the road to the little shop on the corner, where we stocked up with a day’s food.

  Coca Cola, Pot Noodles, cheese and onion crisps, Mars bars, Smarties, two apples, a pint of milk and a tin of kitten food.

  I got the apples because I felt guilty about not eating our five portions of fresh fruit and vegetables a day, like you’re supposed to. Mum always made sure that we did, but since coming to Brighton we’d eaten hardly any fresh fruit or veg at all. It had been nothing but fish and chips and takeaways.

  On our way back to Dad’s basement we bumped into Ms Devine. She didn’t seem as friendly as she had before. She asked me, quite coldly, where Dad was. I said that he was out working.

  “Working where, exactly?” said Ms Devine.

  I said I didn’t know. “He didn’t tell us.”

  “No!” She gave a little snicker, but not like she was amused. “I’m sure he didn’t!”

  “Would you like me to give him a message?” I said.

  “What a good idea! Why not? Just tell him, when he gets back from doing whatever it is he’s doing, that my patience is running out. OK?”