Growing Up Twice

by Rowan Coleman

  ‘Jen!’ Rosie shouts along the corridor in a mildly frustrated tone. ‘What are you doing in there?’

  ‘Phoning Mr Bilton!’ I reply. ‘What do you think?’ Her voice is suddenly right outside the door and I sit up abruptly. She opens the door.

  ‘Oh. Well, he’s here now, so you can stop.’

  ‘Is he? I must have the wrong number, I wondered why I kept getting an unobtainable tone,’ I say, and I follow her out to meet Mr Bilton. Normally that would have been a close thing but I’m finding another side-effect of Rosie’s pregnancy is a short-term memory to rival a goldfish. If any suspicion crossed her mind I’m pretty sure it will be lost in her baby-filled ether by now, drowned out by a cloud of anchovy-craving hormones and the much more interesting prospect of real life, the actual process of creation, right inside her, right now. It pretty much blows my mind when I think about it.

  Mr Bilton is a very tall, very fat man, who wears a very old, very brown, browner than the original colour, very smelly jumper. Mr Bilton is probably London born and bred but for some reason (maybe he has watched too many episodes of Coronation Street and Emmerdale) he feels compelled to call us lasses, miss whole chunks out of sentences and add the letter ‘t’ to the end of random words. Somewhere down the line he must have done a dreadful impression of a northern person and was never able to revert to normal, or he is a northerner who has lived in London so long he sounds half cockney. Either way, on the few occasions that we have spoken it freaks me out. That and his personal hygiene habits.

  I follow him around the flat trying not to gag every time a whiff of stale smoke, sweat or fried food wafts in my direction.

  ‘Of course, there were no subletting allowed.’ He nods at Rosie who leans on the door frame of the living-room, her nose stuck in a permanent wrinkle.

  ‘Rosie? She’s just a mate who’s come to help me move out.’ I smile at him as sweetly as I can whilst holding my breath and he makes a grumbling noise deep in the recesses of his massive girth.

  ‘Table’s broken.’ He points at the three-legged table.

  ‘Yes, but it was when I moved in. You were going to come and fix it. Look, I have the inventory.’ I wave a random piece of paper in his face, hoping he won’t want to take a look. The windy intestine noise erupts and echoes around the empty room.

  We finish our tour, and he points out the iron-shaped burn on the floor (guilty), the broken handles on the kitchen cupboards (guilty) and black bubbly mess of melted lino in the bathroom (not guilty, it was Rosie and I have no idea how she did it). Luckily he doesn’t try the cooker and the beetles seem to be staying in hiding, maybe as a farewell gesture. He tucks his chin into, well, more chins and looks at me from two tiny red-rimmed eyes.

  ‘I’ll give you two hundred back, not a penny more, no point bartering, lass, you’ll get nowt more out of me, y’hear?’ I nod in disbelief and accept the slightly smelly-looking cash.

  I give him the keys and carefully prop open the front door as the last few bits are carried out. He strides off over the road and heads straight into the pub.

  ‘You can’t let him get away with that!’ Rosie says indignantly. ‘This flat was a hell hole when you moved in!’ I tuck the cash in the pocket of my jeans.

  ‘Listen, Rosie, between you, me and the lino incident I’m grateful for whatever I get. I thought he was going to charge me!’ Rosie rolls her eyes at my non-negotiation skills as I grab the last box and take it out.

  Everything is in the van, Rosie and Josh are having one more look under beds, Selin is having a last-ditch attempt at making the hoover pick something up and Danny is in the driver’s seat tuning the radio. He has already offered me the seat next to him. I have declined in deference to Rosie’s condition.

  I take one last look around me as a resident at the Grove, expecting sentiment to kick in at any moment.

  That’s why when I hear Owen’s voice, I think for a moment it’s a daydream.

  ‘Jenny?’ There it is again, fake upper class with a faint trace of Brummy. Owen, he’s here. My stomach takes a tumble for my feet.

  I take a deep breath and look back at the open door. Selin, Rosie and Josh will be down any minute. Finally I look at Owen.

  ‘Owen, hello. What do you want?’ I ask in measured tones. I can’t help giving in a little to the pull that his blue eyes have always had on me.

  Danny must have found the station he wants on the radio, as the volume soars and blots out the noise of the passing traffic, leaving Owen and me standing alone able to hear only each other and hard-core chart rap. Some skinny white guy is extolling the virtues of raping his kid sister and then murdering her.

  ‘What’s going on?’ He gestures at the van. Even though he’s smiling and his voice is reasonable I don’t want him to know I’m moving, it’s just a gut thing. There is still something about him that makes my stomach lurch and my heart pick up pace. The rising volume of the base coming from Danny’s van seems to drum inside my head. Owen takes a step closer to me. I take a step back.

  ‘Owen, why are you here?’ I cock my head to one side and smile at him, attempting to appear as relaxed as possible. Somehow the noise around us has become an inescapable wall.

  ‘Why do you think?’ His genial tone disconcerts me. ‘You’re not answering my calls. Why?’ His smile is still present, a little more tight-lipped but still there.

  Danny’s changed his mind about the rap and for a moment the air is filled with deafening static before the baleful tones of some indie popster wash back in and then out again, complaining about the weather. As Danny searches, snatches of voices, tunes and empty noise buffet the air around me. My irritation with Danny and his god-damn radio and Owen and his god-damn smug smile finally begin to simmer and I start to lose my brittle composure. Any lingering remnants of nostalgic romanticism that I might have felt about him evaporate like mist and I am suddenly certain that I want Owen to go.

  ‘Owen, we split up. You finished with me. Why should I answer your calls?’ I am annoyed with the tight girlish tone in my voice.

  He brushes his floppy blond hair back from his face and chuckles. Yes, chuckles.

  ‘You’re upset with me, of course you are,’ he patronises. ‘I do nothing but hurt you. But you know. It’s always you that I come back to. Those other girls mean nothing to me. They just prove to me more each time how much I love you.’ His voice softens and he steps a little closer to me. ‘This time, Jenny, I think I really have learnt my lesson. This is the last time, I swear to you.’

  As I listen to his litany of clichés I find the anger that rises in my chest almost impossible to quell, but my instinct tells me not to lose my temper. I speak in measured tones.

  ‘Owen, the last time? The last time was the last time.’

  He shakes his head in disbelief and laughs again, almost a giggle this time.

  ‘OK, OK, so you don’t want to be together any more,’ he says, clearly not believing a word of it. ‘But what about being friends? We’ve been too close for too long just to throw it all away.’

  This time I can’t help the angry laugh that escapes my throat.

  ‘Friends? After everything you’ve put me through, you want me to be your friend?’ His face hardens at my tone and I glance over my shoulder again, hoping to see Rosie or Josh, and say, ‘Owen, just go.’

  Another radio station phases in and for a moment the Grove is filled with ‘Hit Me Baby, One More Time’. The volume decreases but Danny doesn’t turn it off.

  Rosie’s voice precedes her down the stairs.

  ‘Right, that’s the last of it, we’re good to go!’ As she emerges on to the road she is saying, ‘Christ, who is playing that awful …’ she sees Owen, ‘… music.’

  ‘Good to go where?’ he asks, looking at me.

  ‘Nowhere,’ I say.

  Rosie joins me and links her arm through mine. ‘Owen,’ she says flatly.

  ‘Rosalind,’ he replies, using the full name she can’t stand. I can feel her bristle.


  She sweetly steps in front of me. ‘Look, you might as well just go. Jen’s moving and there’s nothing you can do about it.’ The secret’s out. It’s at times like this that I wish the psychic connection we have often imagined between the three of us really existed.

  ‘Moving?’ Owen’s voice rises sharply. ‘How can you move without letting me know?’

  Rosie speaks for me. ‘Why should she tell you?’ she hisses. Her eyes narrow and she almost bares her teeth.

  ‘Because I need to know where you are, you fucking bitch!’ As always his sudden verbal violence stuns me into silence. I stare at him, fighting back tears.

  The flat door slams and suddenly Selin and Josh are at my side.

  ‘What’s going on here? Owen, why are you here?’ Josh demands, instantly taking control. Despite his anger Owen takes a step back.

  ‘This is none of your business,’ Owen spits at him. Josh stands in front of both of us and takes another step forward until he’s looking down at Owen.

  ‘No, you’re wrong. This is my business, this is my friend. Now, she doesn’t want you here and neither do I. So why don’t you just fuck off?’ If I’d seen this on TV I’d have just laughed, Owen and Josh standing eyeball to eyeball getting ready to fight over me. I have never seen Josh look so angry. I’ve never seen Josh look angry at all. I wonder if I should try and calm the waters and ease the tension, but I find that I’m rooted to the spot. I’ve seen that look on Owen’s face before. I’m afraid of him.

  All at once the music spins off and the noise of the street rushes back in. Danny hops out of the van and takes in the scene. He saunters over and says, ‘Need any help, man?’ in a noncommittal way that could be addressed to either Josh or Owen in any context. In a second he becomes another best friend. Owen breaks the deadlock and turns on his heel.

  ‘I’ll be in touch,’ he shouts, and his coat-tails flap in the breeze as he marches down the street. I want to thank Josh and Danny, to tell Rosie off for giving it all away and to love her for sticking up for me, but before I can speak I’m in tears and Rosie and Selin are both hugging me tightly.

  Danny lights a roll-up and leans against the van.

  ‘Uptight guy,’ he says.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  The living-room of our new flat is an assault course of boxes and bin bags. We have plugged in the TV and the kettle and although there is a perfectly nice sofa we are sitting on the floor with fish and chips. Selin, Josh and Danny are still here.

  Our encounter with Owen seems like years ago now, just a dream that has already faded and which I have half forgotten. Which I would have completely forgotten if everyone would only stop talking about it.

  ‘So, then I told him to get lost or else,’ Josh proudly tells us again as if we hadn’t all been there.

  Selin eats another chip with a furious expression. ‘Thank God Josh was there, hey, Jen?’ she repeats for the third time.

  ‘Yes,’ I say quietly. ‘Thank God.’ They assume that Owen has made me quiet and withdrawn but actually I am totally, unfairly angry with Josh.

  I don’t know why I’m angry, I was really glad he was there at the time, but this constant harping on about how Owen was clearly insane and probably dangerous, and who knows what might have happened if Josh hadn’t been there to rescue me, is starting to grate. His new-found role as the local knight in shining armour is beginning to get on my nerves. I mean, it wasn’t that big a deal. It seemed scary at the time but really it was just Owen getting on his high horse again. I’m pretty sure he would have left of his own accord if Rosie hadn’t turned up when she did and let the cat out of the bag. Because of Josh’s heroics the rest of the day had been about that little scrap outside the van. Today was meant to be about my new beginning. Now I just want to forget it.

  I change the subject.

  ‘I’m going away next weekend,’ I say. Rosie takes her eyes from Blind Date and looks surprised.

  ‘Oh? You didn’t mention it. Where are you going?’ I think she might be a little peeved that I’m abandoning her for only our second weekend in our new home.

  ‘I’m going to stay with my mum for a couple of nights,’ I lie. ‘I just felt like getting out of London and being made a fuss of,’ I say honestly.

  ‘Yes, good, she needs to get out of town,’ Selin says. ‘Get that cunt Owen out of her head.’

  ‘Selin!’ Rosie exclaims and presses her hands over her ears and then her belly and then her ears again in quick succession. ‘You can’t say that!’

  ‘What, “Owen”?’ Selin asks, winking at me. Selin is so rarely foul-mouthed that whenever she is it just makes me giggle.

  ‘No! You can’t say the “c” word. It’s detrimental to women,’ Rosie says indignantly. Josh is also open-mouthed and Danny looks a bit embarrassed. This is just what I need, some obscenity reclamation to turn the evening round. Maybe Selin does understand how I’m feeling after all.

  ‘I think girls should say it.’ Selin climbs on to this evening’s soapbox. ‘It desensitises it. I mean, we all say “fuck” all the time and who cares about that?’

  ‘It’s not the same,’ Rosie protests and I wink at Selin.

  ‘OK, Rosie, calm down. I’ve got a joke,’ I say, suppressing a giggle. Rosie smiles at me and abandons her new mum-to-be priggishness.

  ‘Why does Rupert the Bear wear chequered trousers?’

  Selin, who has heard this joke before, nearly chokes on a chip.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Rosie sings in a nursery voice. ‘Why does he?’

  ‘Because he’s a cunt!’ I holler with fish-wife hilarity and the tension and stress of my day dissolve in a helpless fit of the giggles. Selin and I catch each other’s eye and neither of us can stop laughing. Eventually even Rosie joins in. Danny and Josh exchange a look.

  ‘I still say you can’t say that about Rupert the Bear. Not Rupert!’ Rosie says, wiping the tears from her eyes.

  Selin, who seems particularly sparkly-eyed ever since she took a fifteen-minute call on her mobile in the kitchen, lies flat on the floor with her arms folded on her belly.

  ‘Let’s say some more swear words,’ she says. ‘It’s like being back at school.’

  But we can’t think of any other rude word that makes us laugh so much.

  Not even cunnilingus.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  I’m the kind of person who loves train stations, trains and train journeys much more than I have ever actually enjoyed arriving anywhere.

  I especially like Waterloo station, with its bright vaults of light and high-topped creations of space. I like the smell of coffee and burgers, the rushing shoals of single-minded people moving as one, pushing past and around each other, and I like the odd collections of shops selling knickers and ties, the very things you need when you are about to travel. I feel almost like a ghost in stations like this, as I always arrive at least thirty minutes early and I am never in a rush. I float dreamlike and invisible through the crowds, free from stress or worry, watching those who can’t even see me.

  I feel blissfully at peace today on the very Saturday morning that I’m about to leave the comfortable confines of the centre of the city and go to see Michael in the country, well, Twickenham, which counts as the country in my book.

  This morning should be filled with the kind of nagging foreboding that normally insinuates itself into the back of my mind whenever I think about what Michael and I are up to, but even that has subsided and instead I am filled with a sense of peaceful contentment that has got everything to do with this train station, I’m sure.

  I wonder if there are other people like me out there who feel calmed by public transport terminals? Maybe I could start a therapy group, and lead hoards of fretful women trapped in inappropriate affairs, downtrodden by work and harried by failure into the roomy peaceful caverns of London’s mainline stations. It works better for me than a jacuzzi, isolation tank or half-bottle of vodka ever has – maybe it’s the promise of a new beginning. Even
if that beginning does happen to be the beginning of a short trip to see my teenage soon-to-be lover.

  Damn it, the nagging foreboding is back. It always comes back when I think of the ‘teenager’ bit.

  At last the train I’m waiting for is ready for boarding and I walk down past the first-class compartments and find an empty carriage. It is a sunny September day and I pick a window spot where the velveteen seat is upholstered in warmth. I look out of the window and check the departure screen just to make sure I’m on the right train, something I have always done since I ended up on a non-stop train to Birmingham on my way to see my mum in Watford.

  I should be in Twickenham in about thirty minutes. Michael will be waiting for me at the station, and although I have never been to Twickenham before I imagine a rural train station with late-flowering hanging baskets swinging from ornate Victorian wrought ironwork. I imagine a platform empty apart from his tall lean frame lounging gracefully against a red-brick wall, his tangerine hair washed out by the sunlight. Somehow, in my daydream, when I step from the train I am wearing a pair of red shoes and a matching hat. As the train pulls away it leaves a gentle mist of steam that keeps us apart for a few moments longer before we are in each other’s arms, kissing without tongues and with a lot of cheek rubbing, in that old black-and-white film way. Well, this is the kind of thing that happens when you let your imagination run away with you.

  The dirty junkyard no man’s land that always seems to exist alongside city train lines slips by and my thoughts turn to the real issue at hand. This weekend – what with us having a lot of time to ourselves, just us two together for longer than a few hours for the first time ever (but never mind, that’s another thing to worry about later) – we will probably have sex.

  The thing is, the last time I saw him in the flesh, so to speak, I really wanted to do it, really I did. He had been so sweet in the pub, so romantic, and so sexy in the taxi. I’d had some gin and about half a pint of that wine and I was all fired up for base four. I haven’t had sex since that dreadful encounter with Danny, which was a disappointing episode. The kind of sex that makes you think a full-length mirror and a box of Kleenex would have served your partner just as well, and that makes you a bit pissed off that you even bothered in the first place. Michael had been so impressed with me that I wanted to eat up his admiration. It’s been a long time since I’ve felt that confident in myself. But, to be really honest, the moment I closed the door on him and walked out of the little bubble we had created for ourselves I felt relieved that nothing too concrete had actually happened, that I hadn’t crossed any kind of boundary.