Going Out

by Scarlett Thomas

  ‘Well, see you later,’ Julie says, walking towards the door.

  ‘I thought you liked The Edge,’ her dad says. ‘You’re always saying, I like being a waitress, it’s simple. So what’s wrong with being a manager? Not simple enough for you?’

  ‘At least I don’t fuck my students,’ Julie says, not quite loud enough for anyone to hear, as she leaves the house.

  Chapter 20

  Luke’s still doing his exercises when Julie walks into his room.

  ‘You’re early,’ he says, looking up from a crunch.

  Julie explains about the floods.

  ‘Do you think we’ll get flooded here?’ he asks her.

  ‘Don’t think so. It hasn’t ever flooded here before, has it? Why?’

  Luke laughs. ‘I’d be fucked if we did.’

  ‘Nah,’ Julie says. ‘You’re upstairs. If it flooded this high, we’d all be fucked.’ Julie sort of slumps on to the bed, looking annoyed.

  ‘So, what’s wrong?’

  ‘Wrong?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Luke gets up off the floor and walks over to his computer and checks his e-mail. ‘You seem all . . . I dunno, all thingy.’

  ‘Oh, my dad pissed me off . . .’

  Luke smiles. ‘Tell me something new.’

  ‘Yeah, and I did this stupid test at work and now they want me to become a manager. It’s so boring I don’t even want to talk about it. But for some reason I told Dawn, and she told my dad, and now they’re both like, It’s a career, and I’m just totally not interested.’

  ‘Wow.’

  ‘Yeah. I just wish it had never happened. I don’t even know if I can keep working at The Edge as a waitress now.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I don’t know. Because I’ve been noticed or something. I just want to do my stuff without anyone noticing and trying to fast-track me to something else.’

  ‘Maybe you’re just good at everything.’

  ‘Try telling my father that. He still thinks I’m the world’s biggest failure.’

  ‘He’s a dick.’

  ‘Yeah, I know.’ Julie laughs. ‘My dad’s a dick. Huh.’

  What would happen if today was the season finale for a TV drama? Luke ponders this question after Julie leaves for Chantel’s party. He reasons that today couldn’t actually be a season finale – everything’s too unresolved. This is more like an episode-before-the-penultimate episode or something; the setback before the resolution. Mind you, there hasn’t been any setback, really, or not any particularly dramatic setbacks. Only Julie would see a job offer as a setback. (Although Luke can understand why this is, it doesn’t work so well as narrative.) Luke’s whole life is a perpetual setback, and it’s not like anything can go more wrong for him. Leanne’s probably going to dump him but that’s what he wanted, so that’s hardly a setback. He will miss the sex, though. Someone succeeds and that’s a setback; someone gets rejected and that’s not. Luke’s life needs more narrative drive, somehow – it’s just not TV enough at the moment.

  The thing about Luke’s life: if it isn’t TV, then what is it?

  One of the only arguments Luke and Julie ever had was over some story she told about her day at The Edge a year or two ago. Her story wasn’t neat enough for Luke, and when she finished it, he’d said something like, ‘Is that it? Didn’t anything else happen?’ and he hadn’t meant to offend her, but she’d started crying, in this weird way that seemed frustrated as well as sad.

  ‘Real life isn’t the way you think it is,’ she’d said, eventually.

  ‘How do I think it is?’

  ‘Like TV.’

  ‘I don’t think that . . . I don’t actually know anything about real life, at least, not outside of my room. I’ve always admitted that. I know TV isn’t real, I just don’t know what is. You and me in here – that’s all I know about reality. And I don’t think we’re like TV,’ he added.

  ‘It’s not the content . . . it’s the structure,’ Julie said. ‘It’s that whole beginning, middle and end thing in narratives. What do they call it? The three-act structure or whatever. Everything you see on TV – every A, B and C strand of a sitcom, every plotline in a soap opera . . .’

  ‘Everything happens for a reason,’ Luke said.

  Julie stared at him. ‘Huh?’

  ‘In TV, everything happens for a reason. That’s how you can predict plots so easily. You know, like in soap opera – if two characters who aren’t normally in scenes together suddenly are, you know that they’re going to have a relationship or that one is the other’s secret son or something.’

  ‘Yeah, exactly. But in real life nothing means anything. Stuff happens and there just is no structure.’

  Luke sighed. ‘I know that. But . . .’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m not in real life, am I? I wish I was in real life but I’m not. I’m stuck in this shitty Truman Show world and TV narratives are all I’ve got. Jules, I’m really sorry I said that thing before, about that story you told . . .’

  ‘It wasn’t a story. That’s my point. It was just an event.’

  ‘I know. I just . . .’

  ‘Not all events are stories. That’s what I’m saying.’

  Luke thought for a moment. ‘Yeah, but people make events into stories. Stories give events meaning, or at least they do for me. I understand stuff better if it’s a story – if it’s edited to make sense, so characters get introduced properly and storylines are identified and resolved, you know, neatly. Like Big Brother – you know how I couldn’t follow the twenty-four-hour webcam thing at all; I could only follow the actual edited TV show? It was because it was cut together to make a story. Sometimes I worry that even if I did get out of here, I wouldn’t be able to follow what was going on, because, I don’t know, because it would be like someone who knew how to sit in a garden thinking that meant they could trek through a jungle or something. Maybe I can only understand things through stories, and I can only understand characters on TV – not real people and I’m better off staying in here with my TV because of that.’

  ‘No, Luke. You’re going to get out of here one day.’

  ‘What, resolve my story? My plotline? Yeah, right.’

  ‘It’s more like TV out there then you think,’ Julie said. ‘People talk like on TV, dress like on TV, get highlights in their hair like on TV, and tell each other stories because, well, the language of TV is stories. Everyone our age talks like they’re on Friends and they have these meaningless conversations with each other that are so, like, you know, almost acted out as if they were on a sitcom. And they’re just covering up their shit lives by doing that. You’re not the only person who sits in front of the TV all the time, you know.’

  ‘Oh.’ Luke smiled, sort of sadly. ‘I’ll feel right at home, then.’

  ‘Look, it’s just me,’ Julie said. ‘I just can’t turn events into stories – or, well, I can, but I just don’t like it. That’s why I got upset, because I thought you wanted me to do that. Thing is, I prefer moments. You know, like when things happen and they just don’t mean anything. When I did English at school the teacher said that fairytales, myths and even the Bible were all just ways of arranging moral code, safety advice and reflections on the world into stories, so that people could understand the messages better, so the messages were more easily digestible and compelling and meaningful. And I get that, I totally do. It’s just that I don’t want life packaged into stories for me, like those stupid ready-meals Dad and Dawn eat.’

  ‘Hang on,’ Luke said. ‘You eat Pot Noodles. What’s the difference between a ready-meal and a Pot Noodle?’

  ‘Pot Noodle doesn’t pretend to be real,’ Julie said. ‘It doesn’t claim to be authentic. It just is what it is.’

  Luke doesn’t know what he doesn’t know, but he knows he doesn’t know it. He feels normal because, to him, he is normal. But he sort of assumes that nothing he does could be normal – that people outside would be different by definition, that they wouldn’t imagine th
ey’re in a TV commercial every time they clean their teeth, or pretend they’re starring in a fitness video when they work out, or think that, someday, someone will make a film of their life and it’ll look just like this. So Luke’s life is TV. That’s just how it is.

  Knowing his life has an unnatural connection with fiction actually comforts him, though. Because if his life is a story, then his illness will have to be cured – there’s no point in it otherwise. In stories, problems are only there so they can be solved. And after all, why have a story about a boy who’s allergic to the sun if he doesn’t get cured? That would be stupid.

  Chapter 21

  ‘Shit,’ Leanne hisses into Julie’s ear. ‘What’s she doing here?’

  The party hasn’t gone well so far. One of the waitresses – they are all wearing themed outfits, although Julie can’t tell what the theme is – has tripped over, dropped a tray of canapés, sprained her ankle and had to be taken to Casualty by one of the cocktail waiters. Chantel’s mother has had to start handing things out herself. A DJ organised by Leanne hasn’t shown up. And now Charlotte’s walked in wearing a long lacy skirt, a bra top, a fake-snakeskin jacket and an old pair of Dunlop tennis shoes. By the look on Leanne’s face, her arrival is the biggest setback so far.

  Everyone is mingling in the new sitting room – redecorated by Chantel’s mother and the man in turquoise who’s been hanging around Windy Close the last week or so. The old sitting room had just a sofa, a couple of armchairs, a mantelpiece, a stereo and a TV. The new one has a leather floor, a water feature, a curved, waiting-room-style seating arrangement, also in leather; some hanging shelves with glass ornaments, plants sitting in coloured glass rather than earth, and silver blinds.

  ‘Hey, Jules,’ says Charlotte, walking over.

  ‘Hiya,’ says Julie.

  Leanne sighs loudly.

  ‘Hello, Leanne,’ says Charlotte.

  ‘How did she know about the party?’ Leanne hisses.

  ‘Julie invited me,’ says Charlotte.

  On the far side of the room, a large man is setting up a karaoke machine. Meanwhile, someone’s put Smash Hits Mix ’97 on the large silver CD player, and in the centre of the large room, some little girls in sparkly dresses and big earrings are dancing to ‘Wannabe’ by the Spice Girls, bouncing on the leather floor, doing a routine that must have taken hours to work out.

  ‘Who are they?’ Charlotte asks.

  ‘Cousins and stuff, I think,’ Julie says. ‘From Dagenham.’

  ‘You’d better not cause any trouble,’ Leanne says to Charlotte.

  ‘Which one’s Chantel’s mum?’ Charlotte asks Julie.

  Julie looks around. ‘I’m not sure,’ she says. ‘I don’t really know what she looks like.’

  ‘There’s her,’ says Leanne, pointing to a slim woman with a blonde bob, a black dress and a plate of prawn dim-sum. ‘But don’t talk to . . .’

  Charlotte walks off in the direction of Chantel’s mother.

  ‘For God’s sake,’ Leanne says to Julie. ‘She’s so going to mess everything up.’

  Julie smiles. ‘She won’t. She’s just winding you up.’

  ‘She’d better be.’

  As Julie predicted, Charlotte doesn’t talk to Chantel’s mum at all. Instead, she takes a dim-sum from the silver tray, then walks straight past her and out of the sitting room.

  ‘See,’ says Julie. ‘She’s just winding you up.’

  ‘Hmmm.’ Leanne sips some white wine. ‘How’s Luke?’

  ‘He’s fine. You know. Normal.’

  ‘Upset that he can’t come to the party?’

  ‘No, not really. He’s used to it.’

  ‘I suppose he is. Oh – there’s David.’ She waves. ‘Hi, sexy.’

  David comes over. ‘Where’s Chantel?’ he asks.

  ‘Dunno,’ Leanne says. ‘Maybe she’s still getting ready.’

  ‘How are you feeling?’ Julie asks David.

  He gives her a shut-your-mouth look. ‘Fine,’ he says. ‘How about you?’

  ‘See!’ says Leanne. ‘I knew there was something going on between you two.’

  ‘Leanne!’ says Julie.

  ‘Fucking hell,’ says David. ‘Jesus.’

  ‘You do fancy each other, though, don’t you?’ says Leanne.

  ‘No,’ says Julie and walks off.

  The kitchen, like everything else in the house, is different. A long time ago, Julie used to come in here to cook Findus Crispy Pancakes with Charlotte. She would stand there trying not to get in the way or be noticed, while Charlotte got in Mark’s mum’s way – usually on purpose – making a mess. When Charlotte and Mark lived here they paid board to Mark’s mum in the form of small amounts of cash and large amounts of housework. They cooked for themselves because food wasn’t part of the deal. They had their own half-shelf in the fridge, a corner of the coffin-style freezer and their own plates, mugs and glasses in half of the highest cupboard in the kitchen. They did their own shopping most of the time although sometimes Mark was allowed to add a few items to his mother’s list. Charlotte never was. If Charlotte was working, or away, Mark’s mother would cook for him – some ‘it’s your favourite’ extravaganza involving frozen peas and gravy – as if he’d been away for a long time, possibly in the wilderness, and had just returned home. At that time Charlotte never seemed to eat anything but microwave food and Findus Crispy Pancakes.

  Even Julie would eat Findus Crispy Pancakes – not that she’s eaten them since Charlotte left – and after they were cooked, she and Charlotte would take them into the garden where they’d sit on the grass by the pond and break them in half, opening their mouths wide to catch the long strands of melted cheese. Charlotte, as always, was less inhibited than Julie, who always looked for wasps and wished she was inside. But it was still fun; more so as a nostalgic reflection than at the time, of course. The past is always more fun for Julie than the present. The one thing Julie knows she’ll always survive is the past.

  In those days the kitchen floor was tiled in mint-coloured lino, and powered by practical, function-over-form white goods – a fridge, kettle, microwave, chip fryer and toaster that looked like they had been entirely moulded from the same piece of cheap plastic. But now these items have been replaced with expensive-looking chrome versions. The fridge looks like a spaceship or some kind of nuclear weapon. The kitchen surfaces are now finished in marble, and the breakfast bar – which Mark’s family used as a place to store letters, old copies of the Daily Mail and seedlings – is now a tasteful collage of tiny silver-and-white tiles.

  Chantel’s mother is poking around in the fridge and a waiter has just left the kitchen with a tray of drinks. Julie suddenly gets the feeling that this kitchen is out of bounds; that this isn’t one of those parties where you help yourself to beer from the fridge and hang around listening to people talk about drugs, sex and how the party’s so crap and embarrassing and the music so shit that they have to stand in the kitchen to get away from it. Julie’s head is starting to spin. It’s raining hard outside again.

  ‘Are you all right, love?’ Chantel’s mother says to her. ‘Are you lost?’

  ‘Oh, sorry . . . No. I was looking for . . . It doesn’t matter.’

  Chantel’s mother shuts the fridge and walks over to Julie.

  ‘Are you sure you’re OK, love?’

  Julie grabs the breakfast bar with both hands. She can see she’s leaving fingerprints on the little tiles but that doesn’t really matter now she’s dying. Her head feels like it’s swelling. Oh, shit. Her hands go numb, then her forearms, then her neck.

  She tries to smile at Chantel’s mother, pretending that nothing’s wrong.

  I’m not dying. I can smile. If I can still keep up appearances, I’m OK.

  ‘Sit down, love, come on, at the table.’

  But she thinks I’m ill. Maybe I look bad. I must look bad, and this is going to be it. Is this a brain haemorrhage? What should my last thought be?

  ‘Come on, love
.’

  I want my mum. I want my mum. I want my mum.

  ‘Would you like a glass of water?’

  Julie shakes her head. She sits down at the table and puts her head in her hands, her eyes closed. Everything’s still spinning and the music from the other room sounds like it’s been slowed down or distorted. Still keeping her head down, she runs her sweaty fingers through her hair.

  ‘I’ll make you a nice cup of tea, then.’

  The dying feeling starts to pass, but Julie’s still shaking. Now that she’s not dying, she notices how much she’s shaking, and she feels stupid, and washed out, and exhausted. I’m not going to die, she thinks. Then she thinks: touch wood. And then she does – she touches her little wooden lion keyring that she’s had since she was about ten or maybe longer: she had it when her family first moved to Windy Close. It doesn’t even look like a lion any more, it’s been touched so many times.

  Julie doesn’t believe in fate but she started the touch wood thing before she realised that. And it’s always worked, which makes it almost scientific. Then again Julie isn’t into that sort of science. Not since she learnt about Bertrand Russell’s Inductivist Turkey. Just because you observe something happening the same way over a period of time doesn’t mean it’s always going to happen that way. The turkey thought because he was fed every morning at nine a.m. he always would be. And he was, until Christmas Eve. Still, Julie’s carried on touching wood because it makes her feel better, and because it takes her mind off feeling like she’s going to die. In that sense, it does work.

  Chantel’s mother puts a cup of tea in front of Julie, along with a sugar bowl.

  ‘I’m Nicky, by the way.’