Growing Up Twice

by Rowan Coleman

  You know what? I can’t imagine any thirty-year-old man racking his conscience over whether or not to have sex with a willing eighteen-year-old girl. I think I think too much.

  Twickenham is the next stop and if I want to have sex with him I damn well will. Probably. Always supposing he doesn’t blow it before we get to the crunch, that is.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Twickenham station is nothing like I imagined, it’s more of a concrete post-war concoction with some half-dead flowers in what used to be a rubbish bin, before rubbish bins were banned.

  Michael is not on the platform and there seems to be more than one way out. I follow the signs and the people until I find myself outside by a taxi rank. I button my cherry-red leather denim-style jacket up to protect my probably too-bare cleavage from a sudden breeze that goes right through my jeans. I stand on one high-heeled booted foot and then the other. There is no sign of Michael.

  This is very annoying. I had especially planned my journey so that my train would arrive fifteen minutes after we had arranged to meet, but I can’t see his red hair anywhere in the crowd and now he is twenty minutes late. I think lateness is so rude.

  I could phone him but I don’t want to seem too keen. I’ll wait for another ten minutes and then get the next train back to Waterloo; I’ll take it as a sign that this was never meant to be and prepare myself for the comforting welcome of my favourite terminal and McDonald’s. The prospect suddenly seems rather inviting.

  Except that here he is now, running right at me, the pockets of his combats flapping in the wind. Does he have any other type of trouser option apart from combats, I wonder? Does he have more than one pair, for that matter?

  ‘Hi!’ he says, halting millimetres from my face, eyes wide with smiles. ‘God, sorry I’m so late, I had to wait ages for a bus and the battery on my mobile is dead so I couldn’t even call you. God, I’m sorry.’ He grabs my forearm a little awkwardly and kisses my cheek with cold lips. Wanting to reassure him, I pat the small of his back and look up into his brown eyes.

  ‘I’ve only been waiting a few minutes. My train was late.’ It seems as though all the intimacies we established last time we saw each other need to be recreated. We touch each other clumsily, and as he leads me away he takes my hand the wrong way and we laugh, break hands and re-engage in a self-conscious way. It’s been a long time since anyone wanted to hold my hand in public.

  ‘The bus-stop is over here,’ he says, and I follow him, silently considering and deciding not to offer to pay for a cab. As we reach the stand he sits down on one of the narrow benches and gestures for me to sit on his knee. I think of the weight of my behind and the slenderness of his thighs and I can’t think of anything worse, so I decline. From a barely discernible gathering of his eyebrows I think he is slightly hurt, but not half as much as he would be if I sat on his unsupported knee.

  ‘So, what fun have you got planned for me this weekend?’ I say, waggling my eyebrows in a suggestive way, against my better judgement. His eyebrows smooth out and he laughs at me, shaking his head.

  ‘I thought we could go to my local tonight and play some pool, my mates will be down there. Sarah might be there too, but she’ll be cool. At least she should be by now, it has been nearly a month.’

  I nod in agreement and think ‘poor old Sarah’, and then I think there is nothing I want less than to be in the pub with his beer-mat-flipping fraternity putting pound coins in the jukebox to listen to tuneless nonsense I’ve never heard of and then pooling the last of their change on the table to see if they’ve got enough for another round. Been there, done that. So vehement is my reaction that I almost turn around and head back to the station, but just at that moment Michael’s long fingers reach out to hook around mine and he tugs me close to him and stands up to put his arms around my waist.

  ‘I’m so glad you’re here,’ he says, kissing me softly and drawing me into the fold of his body, blotting out the cold.

  I decide to stay.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  His house is not exactly the TV-land suburban semi that I imagined. The avenue he lives on is tree lined and quiet, with only a few cars – probably aged cars for the children to drive – parked along the road. The grown-up cars reside side by side in married pairs on wide and accommodating driveways.

  As we walk down the road I half listen to Michael’s faithful rendition of his favourite scene from Star Wars, but my more attentive half takes in huge basement kitchens with stainless-steel hoods presiding over gleaming white worktops, or glimpses of a living-room that has surely never been used for living, with curtains in the same material as the sofa.

  I have no idea why I am so fascinated by this other-world lifestyle, so different from mine. Maybe it is because where I grew up houses this big had invariably been turned into flats by the 1960s. Maybe it’s because no one in my family had a car at all after Dad left so there hadn’t even been the possibility that at age seventeen I might be presented with a car myself to park on the street or anywhere else. But more than likely it’s just because I’m nosy, because I’m awestruck that some people really do have lawnmowers you can drive, and others really do go to John Lewis to get soft furnishings that match their sofa.

  Mainly, I’m impressed that some people who don’t live in America have swimming-pools in their gardens, judging by the pool-filter van that’s just pulling out of the house up ahead.

  Michael takes two steps ahead of me, turns to face me and, walking backwards, says, ‘And then, and then right, Darth Vader goes …’ He cups his hands over his mouth to add the required sound effect. ‘“Your powers grow weak, old man. First I was the pupil but now I am the master. Ha ha ha ha ha!”’ His hand drops to his side and he falls back in step next to me. ‘And then Obe Wan Kenobe gets killed but he becomes more powerful than when he was alive, so it’s cool.’

  This is the sort of thing that might make me wonder how much intellectual stimulus I can expect dating an eighteen-year-old. Except that I’ve been on the receiving end of exactly the same monologue about either Star Wars, Withnail and I, Monty Python, The Young Ones, Blackadder and, more recently, Buffy the Vampire Slayer with so many men of so many different ages and backgrounds that I can’t really pin it on immaturity. Well, not the kind you measure in years anyway. Michael continues.

  ‘That is a classic, classic moment. I did sort of like episode one, but I do sort of think Lucas shouldn’t have directed it himself, and what about … oh hang, the pool people have come early. I’d just better go and check what they’ve done. Hang on.’

  He bounds off to catch the van as it’s turning on to the road. I watch him sign something and confidently pat the van on the side as it drives past me. He stands at the gate of his house waiting for me to walk the last few steps to his side.

  His house isn’t a semi-mansion, it is an actual mansion, at least in my book. Set in actual ground with an actual swimming-pool (now safely netted against autumn leaves) and a summer-house gazebo-type thing in the back. I mean, I thought he was nicely spoken but, well you know, I hadn’t imagined him to be actually rich.

  Once inside, Michael takes my jacket and hangs it in a double-doored closet in the hallway and leads me into a kitchen so enormous that in the middle there is a central isle of working top for no apparent purpose at all other than to cover a built-in (fully stocked) wine rack. A dark blue glass vase holding those really expensive, almost real-looking, fake sunflowers sits demurely at its centre. Despite the unseemly amount of cupboard space, some of which probably hides a fridge, washing-machine and dishwasher, there is a wrought-iron pan-rack thingy hanging from the ceiling, replete with brass pans that I guess are probably just there for show. Also hanging up are bunches of dried herbs and a large bunch of my arch-rival nemesis, dried lavender, guaranteed to set off an asthma attack if I get too close. I pull my inhaler out of my bag and retreat to a breakfast bar that runs along the wall to french windows that overlook a patio running down to the pool, which prec
edes the gazebo which hides some sort of secret garden behind.

  I must be some kind of snob; the whole thing makes me feel extremely uncomfortable and Eliza Dolittle-ish. The only thing saving me is the blindingly obvious fact that Michael is so shaken up by having a potentially willing sexual partner in his empty house that he is rattling on about bollocks like there is no tomorrow.

  ‘And so I said, if Sigourney Weaver can be cloned in Alien Resurrection then of course they can make Terminator Three! Coffee?’ He holds a brightly glazed mug up for my attention.

  ‘Yes, I’d love some,’ I say. ‘Your house is amazing!’ He looks around him as if he has suddenly been transported to another universe.

  ‘Is it? I suppose growing up here, you just get used to it.’ His offhand tone rankles.

  ‘Mike, you’ve got a pool, for Christ’s sake! No one has a pool!’ He smiles and carefully folds a filter for the kind of percolator Rosie would give her eye teeth for.

  ‘You never call me Mike. I like it. I like it better than Michael.’ He spoons in three scoops of rich-smelling coffee, pours some bottled water into the measuring jug and then into the filter tank. Viva instant.

  ‘We are better off than some people, I suppose, but I still go to a comprehensive and Dad votes Labour. We aren’t fascists or anything.’

  ‘I didn’t say you were, Mike.’ I say, not remotely interested in talking sixth-form politics with him.

  ‘I didn’t say you did, Jen,’ he replies with his deep chuckle. He seems to have relaxed a little. As the coffee begins to bubble and gurgle in the pot he walks over and joins me at the breakfast bar, pulling his stool close to mine.

  ‘Come here often?’ he says in the most appalling and entirely inappropriate small town nightclub lingo. ‘Jen, Jennifer, Jenny, Jen?’

  Without waiting for an answer he leans over and kisses my smile, pushing my mouth open with his tongue. He really is a great kisser for his age. His hands run up from my knees to my thighs and my hands remain primly folded in my lap. I sit still and let myself float in his kiss until the percolator has brewed three mugs’ worth of coffee and sits quietly simmering. Then I pull away from him and say, ‘Black no sugar, please.’

  He opens his eyes and smiles at me, jumping off his stool with careless abandon.

  One of the sad things about life post virginity is that you hardly ever kiss just for the sake of it any more. It’s almost always a prelude to sex. Just like that kiss was too, I suppose.

  ‘Come on, let’s go upstairs,’ he says, handing me my coffee. My stomach ties in little knots and flips over. I am the one feeling eighteen again. Well, I’m the one feeling an eighteen-year-old anyway, ho ho.

  His room is not on the first floor, nor even the second. Instead, at the end of the second landing, he pulls on a rope and a sturdy-looking pine staircase emerges from the ceiling.

  ‘Loft apartment,’ he laughs, and standing aside takes my coffee. ‘After you.’

  I’ve not been keen on the steep-perilous-looking-stairs-and-high-heel combination ever since I fell down the escalator at King’s Cross, sliding on my shins and leaving long deep parallel gouges that took ages to heal, and which at one point created a whole new pulling persona for me of recently attacked tiger trainer. But nevertheless I gingerly make my way up the stairs and emerge into the biggest teen room I have ever seen.

  Covering the length and breadth of the house it has gable windows either side, and even more light flooding in through skylights. The floor is covered with real wooden boards and there is a sofa bed, a TV and a stereo covered with extensive and unruly piles of videos and CDs, then at the other end a door opens on to his own bathroom. There is also a kitchen unit and a mini fridge. Scatter rugs cover some of the floor and instead of heavy-metal posters on the terracotta walls, Picasso prints decorate the room, framed and hanging neatly side by side.

  ‘Bloody hell, Mike,’ I say, using his new pseudo-pet name. ‘This is bigger than my entire flat!’

  ‘Yeah,’ he laughs, ‘my parents decided I could use my own space soon after I got into nu-metal. Then when I leave home it’ll be a good guest room.’ Along with the other six or seven, I think to myself.

  ‘Music?’ he says and plunges on to the floor to start going though the CDs. ‘What do you fancy?’

  ‘Not Slipknot,’ I say pointedly and he laughs.

  ‘I don’t have any disco.’ We have never talked about music, I don’t know how he’s picked up on my tastes.

  ‘What about David Gray?’ he says. ‘I got White Ladder last week, it reminds me of you, sort of.’

  I smile at him, despite not having a single clue what David Gray sounds like, and say, ‘Sure.’

  Pleasant-sounding tunes fill the room and I am still standing looking around, diligently drinking my coffee, as he begins to pile his CDs into miniature tower blocks. I watch him until he abruptly stands up, walks over to his sofa bed and flips it open. I’m sort of shocked at his forthrightness and my stomach does that little flippy thing again.

  He lies on the mattress and pushes off his trainers without undoing the laces in a way that would make his mother weep if she could see him. Actually, the whole almost-thirty-year-old-girl-in-his-room thing would probably make his mother weep, so let’s skip over that.

  He holds out his hand to me.

  Self-consciously I set my coffee on the floor and unzip my boots and lie stiffly next to him.

  He pulls himself up on to his elbow and looks at me.

  ‘Are you ready?’ he says bluntly. I almost choke and for a second I feel like I’m lost in the absurdity of the situation.

  ‘Are you ready?’ I say. He looks at his hands and then looks back up at me through his eyelashes with a heartbreakingly sweet smile. He nods.

  ‘Ohhh Babylon,’ David Gray sings.

  Michael slowly unbuttons my top and pushes it back off my shoulders with the palms of his hands. ‘You’re pretty hot,’ he says, laughing at himself as he says it and making me giggle too. The laughter seems to have released me from my nervous thrall and I sit up and pull my top right off, dropping it to the floor. Watching me, Michael pulls his T-shirt over his head and starts his own pile on the floor.

  ‘You next,’ he says, and watches me as I stand and unbutton my jeans. There doesn’t seem to be any especially graceful or sexy way of taking off jeans, but I manage OK, remembering to grab my socks at the last minute.

  ‘Now you,’ I say, and he stands opposite me, dropping his combats in one easy movement, stepping out of them, leaving his socks on. He nods at me, and raises an eyebrow.

  Oddly enough, stripping for him seems to be the easiest thing in the world and I’m glad, really glad that we aren’t fumbling around with each other’s catches or zippers.

  I reach behind and unhook my bra, trying not to envisage what my breasts will look like without its support. I slip each strap down from my shoulders and ease it away, letting it fall to the floor and finally uncovering myself, letting my hands fall uneasily to my sides.

  We both bend simultaneously to remove the last of our underwear and for one second longer we look at each other across the expanse of his sofa bed.

  Then, both kneeling on the bed, his hand reaches out for my hand and he brings my fingers to his lips, kissing each one in turn. I tip my head back and close my eyes, unable to stop myself smiling as he turns my fingers over, kisses my palm and then my wrist and gradually inches his way closer to me as he works his way along my arm. Afraid that we could be here for hours, I break away from his kisses and fling the same arm around his neck pulling him flush to my body. The shock of the impact of flesh makes him moan and I am overwhelmed by the full force of his long lean body as he embraces me, his hands in the small of my back, pushing me closer as we kiss.

  He lowers me on to my back and hovers over me, his eyes roaming across my torso. Straddling me, he cups my breasts in both hands and as he looks at them whispers, ‘You’re so beautiful.’

  I watch him as leans to kiss on
e nipple and then the next, gently sucking and licking each one in turn until I feel my stomach tighten with the promise of pleasure. I hadn’t expected this.

  I feel his hand begin to trail its way to between my thighs, but I shift a little to block its path. As much as I would love to just let this happen to me I take control and I shake my head, knowing that too much delay, too much worrying about what I’m feeling would spoil the moment for him. I’m already turned on all I need to be by the way that he wants me. I roll him on to his back and he grins with delight as I reach over him to pick up the condom he has at some point placed on the bed and, straddling him, I put it on as carefully as I ever have, not wanting to set anything off before time. His smile fades and his eyes are fixed on me with an intense gaze. The muscles in his throat contract and I can see longing, nerves and anticipation crowd into his face.

  I lean over him and kiss him, lean forward a little more to let him kiss my breasts and then slowly I lower myself on to him, pleased with the way he seems to fill me. He sighs and closes his eyes, furrowing his brow with concentration, his hand reaching out to grip my forearms either side of him.

  His eyes open halfway and we hold each other’s gaze as I slowly begin to move. It is moments, only seconds I suppose, before he comes with a shudder and reaches up to clasp me to him. Although I haven’t come during those short moments of fusion I feel like the sexiest woman on earth.