Going Out

by Scarlett Thomas

  Chapter 23

  Leanne’s trying to find someone to duet with her on ‘Summer Nights’ from Grease.

  ‘I’m fucking out of here,’ David says.

  ‘Me too,’ says Charlotte. ‘I’ve had enough of karaoke. Jules?’

  ‘Yeah. I’ll just say goodbye to Nicky. Then shall we go to Luke’s?’

  ‘Is that the guy who’s allergic to the sun?’ David asks.

  ‘Yeah,’ says Julie.

  David makes for the door. ‘Sorted,’ he says.

  When Julie, Charlotte and David get to Luke’s, Chantel is there. She looks healthy – Julie wouldn’t often describe someone as looking ‘healthy’, but Chantel is almost glowing with it – tanned and fit. Her shiny chocolate-Labrador-colour long hair is tied in two plaits that come down over her shoulders. She’s wearing a long skirt, a hooded skating-logo top, and there are some blue trainers with two white stripes on each of them lying on the floor. The hoody has a little kangaroo pouch on it, and Chantel has one of her hands in it. Her legs are crossed at the ankles, dangling over the edge of Luke’s bed. She’s drinking a can of beer.

  In the background, Luke’s TV is on, as always, but with the volume switched off. Eurotrash or Ibiza Uncovered is on; Julie can’t tell which. All she can see on the screen is a huge pair of breasts.

  ‘You must be Julie,’ Chantel says.

  Julie smiles. ‘You must be Chantel.’

  ‘Yeah. Call me Chan, though.’

  ‘I like your skirt,’ Charlotte says to Chantel. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Hooch,’ Chantel says. ‘Nice, isn’t it?’

  Julie suddenly feels like two popular girls at school are having a conversation and she’s just eavesdropping. She doesn’t even know what Hooch is, but she assumes it must be a surfing or skating clothes brand of some kind.

  ‘What do you think, Jules?’ Charlotte says. ‘Cool skirt, isn’t it?’

  ‘Uh, yeah,’ Julie says. ‘It’s nice.’

  David shakes hands awkwardly with Luke. ‘All right, mate?’

  ‘This is David,’ Julie says to Luke.

  Luke looks like he’s going to say something but Julie indicates for him not to.

  ‘Hi,’ he says instead.

  David circles the room looking for somewhere to sit. Charlotte’s settled down on the armchair, and Julie’s just sitting down on the computer chair. Eventually David sits on the floor by the bed.

  ‘Where’s Leanne?’ Chantel asks.

  ‘Singing “Summer Nights” at your place,’ explains Julie.

  ‘That’s why we left,’ adds Charlotte.

  ‘Also, she’s avoiding Luke,’ Julie says. She looks at Luke. ‘I think your tactics worked. She’s been going on about letting you down gently. Must have been the Pink Floyd.’

  Charlotte laughs. ‘Oh my God. I still can’t believe you did it with her.’ She starts rolling a cigarette.

  ‘Chan’s into surfing,’ Luke says, quickly changing the subject.

  ‘Luke’s always wanted to surf,’ Julie explains to David. ‘Where do you go surfing?’ she asks Chantel.

  ‘My mates go down Cornwall,’ David says.

  ‘I’ve never actually gone,’ Chantel says. ‘I want to, but . . .’

  ‘You’ve never been?’ says Charlotte. ‘How do you know you’re into it?’

  ‘I just do. It’s just a feeling, like . . . I don’t want to sound like a wanker, but you know when you feel like you’ve been born to do something? I could never afford to go before, and now I can, but I’m scared. It’s so blokey and stuff. I just need to find someone to go with me. It’ll happen. I’m only nineteen.’

  ‘Isn’t surfing really difficult to learn?’ Charlotte asks.

  Chantel shrugs. ‘Nah. Not when you’re born to do it.’ She smiles. ‘Anyway, I’ve read all the magazines. How hard can it be?’

  David laughs. ‘Good attitude,’ he says.

  The music stops and Julie gets up to change it.

  ‘So what’s happened to you?’ Luke asks Charlotte.

  She lights her roll-up. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You’ve gone all hippy.’

  ‘Fuck off. I haven’t gone all hippy.’

  ‘You’re smoking roll-ups.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Julie says. ‘And doing yoga.’

  ‘Yoga’s cool. Don’t fuck with my yoga.’

  ‘What kind of yoga are you doing?’ Chantel asks.

  Charlotte relights her roll-up. ‘Ayurvedic.’

  Chantel nods. ‘Cool,’ she says.

  ‘You what?’ David says.

  ‘Ayurveda,’ Charlotte says. ‘It’s Indian.’

  ‘How does Ayurveda work?’ Julie asks. ‘Is it just yoga or a whole mind–body thing?’

  Charlotte draws both her legs up and crosses them underneath her on the armchair. ‘It’s a whole thing.’

  ‘It’s the one with doshas, isn’t it?’ Chantel says.

  ‘That’s right. Every person is born with a particular constitution, and that’s called a dosha. There are three: vata, pitta and kapha. Each one has a distinct diet that balances it, and certain forms of yoga that are more beneficial than others.’

  ‘I’m pitta, apparently,’ Chantel says. ‘Fiery, oily and competitive.’

  ‘What are you?’ Luke asks Charlotte.

  ‘Vata,’ she says. ‘Small, cold and neurotic. Why are you laughing?’

  ‘How do you know about all this?’ David asks Chantel.

  ‘My mum did it,’ Chantel explains. ‘She’s done everything like that.’

  ‘Does she still do it?’ Charlotte asks.

  ‘No. It was just another fad with her.’

  ‘So you’re really into this?’ Julie asks Charlotte.

  ‘Yeah. It’s no big deal, though. I mean, I may be a fucking vegetarian pacifist who eats rice pudding for lunch and can never eat or drink anything cold, but I feel better than I have in ages.’

  ‘Rice pudding?’ Luke says. ‘Why?’

  ‘My vata is unbalanced,’ explains Charlotte. ‘I have to eat warm things.’

  ‘I hate all that New Age crap,’ David says.

  ‘It’s not really New Age,’ Charlotte says. ‘Well, I mean, the New Age people do Ayurveda but I’m not exactly one of them.’

  ‘You know what I don’t understand about the New Age thing?’ Chantel says.

  ‘What?’ asks Charlotte.

  ‘Well – not meaning you or anything, Charlotte, because what you’re doing sounds really cool and Ayurveda is really good – but, well, you’d think that all these people – the New Age people, I mean – having discovered all these ways of living longer and beating cancer and detoxification and all that, well, you’d think they’d be a bit more happy, wouldn’t you? They should go around looking contented with huge smiles on their faces the whole time, laughing and singing and telling jokes, but they don’t, do they? They just look really depressed and ill the whole time, and their hair’s always thin and stringy and their skin’s always grey and they never smile, and they never laugh and, well . . . Who’d want to be like that? I paid for my mum to get in one of those New Age life coaches and she was a right nightmare. Bad breath, bad hair, weird food . . .’

  David laughs. ‘Fucking right,’ he says.

  ‘I think they’re all so unhappy because they’ve given up smoking and drinking and caffeine,’ Charlotte says. ‘I’m not quite there yet.’ She looks at Luke. ‘Anyway, what’s with you?’

  Julie’s noticed too. Luke seems different. He’s more talkative; more direct.

  ‘I gave him some beer,’ Chantel says. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘You what?’ Julie says, spinning around in the computer chair and staring at him. ‘God, Luke, are you OK?’

  ‘I’m fine,’ he says.

  ‘Aren’t you supposed to drink?’ David asks.

  ‘No.’ Luke giggles. ‘I’m not dead, though.’

  ‘Shit,’ Julie says. ‘This has to stop.’

  She can feel her face getting
red, but she doesn’t care who’s here, or what they’re thinking. Luke’s been taking risk after risk lately, and it’s stupid. All this idiotic stuff about going out; it’s like a constant pressure in her head all the time. Is my friend going to die today? How many people think that when they wake up? Is my friend going to kill himself because he wants to be free?

  ‘It’s OK, Jules,’ Luke says quietly, looking down at his hands. ‘Don’t worry.’

  ‘Are you really allergic to loads of things?’ David asks.

  ‘Yeah,’ says Luke, without looking up. ‘Since I was a baby.’

  ‘I didn’t realise you couldn’t have beer,’ Chantel says. ‘Shit. It’s a good job I didn’t skin-up as well.’ She looks at Julie. ‘I’m really sorry. Oh, God. Could he have got really ill or something?’

  Julie shrugs. ‘We don’t know. Alcohol is just one of those things that he’s never tried, you know, because he’s probably allergic. Because all his childhood allergies fitted a pattern – he was badly asthmatic, had a terrible peanut allergy and so on – we just assumed he wouldn’t be able to tolerate alcohol as an adult. These things all come in groups, you know, like headache triggers.’

  Julie gets up and bustles around Luke, feeling a bit like a nurse. She puts her hand on his forehead to feel for a temperature then takes his pulse. It’s hard to find his pulse with her own going so fast, and her fingers are sweaty as she presses them first to his wrist, then his neck. Then she looks at his tongue and asks if he feels tingly anywhere. She’s known this routine since childhood. While she’s doing all this, she can feel everyone else in the room watching her. She wishes they’d talk among themselves or something.

  ‘Is he OK?’ Chantel says.

  ‘He looks all right,’ says Charlotte.

  ‘Can I do anything?’ says Chantel.

  ‘He’s OK,’ Julie says, giving Luke a look. She sits back down at the computer. Something’s flashing on the screen, but she ignores it and connects to Hotmail, just for something to do. There’s nothing there. How could there be? All her friends are here.

  ‘So Luke, mate,’ David says. ‘What’s it like being allergic to everything?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he says.

  ‘Huh?’ says Chantel. ‘How can you not know?’

  ‘I can’t know what it’s like, because I don’t have anything to compare it with. It’s like me asking you what it’s like to be normal. If I asked you that – or if some alien came and asked what it’s like to be a normal human being – you’d probably say it was kind of crap, and pretty lonely sometimes, and that you wished for all these things that you can’t really have, and that you want more money and more freedom and someone to love you, or at least to shag occasionally. That’s what I’d say, too, but our lives obviously aren’t the same. If you want to know what it’s like being stuck in my room all day, I’d have to just say it’s normal. It’s what I always do. It’s OK, but it’s a bit shit too. I get bored, just like everybody else. I get excited sometimes, like if I’m going out with someone nice, or if there’s something really good on TV.’

  ‘Chantel wouldn’t wish for all those things, though,’ says David. He looks at Chantel. ‘Didn’t you win the Lottery or something?’

  Chantel frowns. ‘Yeah, I did.’

  ‘So you’ve already got half those things, then.’

  ‘Nope,’ says Chantel. ‘Just the money.’

  ‘Did you get all six numbers?’ asks Julie suddenly, looking up from the computer.

  Chantel nods. ‘Yeah.’

  ‘What were they?’ she asks.

  ‘Um . . . 6, 11, 14, 19, 40 and 45.’

  ‘Birthday?’ guesses David.

  ‘Yeah, sixth of November.’

  ‘What about the others?’ asks Charlotte.

  Chantel blushes a bit. ‘Fourteen was . . . the age when I first had sex. Well, kind of sex.’

  David sort of smiles.

  ‘What’s “kind of ” sex?’ Charlotte asks.

  Chantel smiles, but ignores her. ‘And I’m nineteen now.’

  ‘What about 40 and 45?’ asks Luke.

  ‘Oh, I . . . I just thought they looked pretty,’ she says.

  Julie understands why Chantel would have chosen numbers because they looked pretty. Maybe it’s because of their colours. Julie’s seen numbers in colour all her life; maybe everyone does. The number 1 is white; 2 is yellow and 3 is blue; 4 is dark red, 5 is orange, 6 is white – almost like 1, but with a small hint of blue; 7 is red or blue, depending on Julie’s mood; 8 is dark orange and 9 is black.

  She’s sometimes wondered if other people see numbers in colour or not, and how they see numbers in their minds in general. In Julie’s mind, they form a definite pattern that she could draw if she had to – a diagonal line stretching from about minus 100, which sits in the bottom left-hand corner of her mind, up to 100, which she can see in the top right-hand corner. Zero is in the middle. If Julie needs higher or lower numbers, she scrolls up or down to them, her line of numbers always scrolling from bottom left to top right, moving upwards or downwards like an escalator. Beyond a million, the line gets a bit dim; the lights aren’t so bright up that high. As for infinity, the infinity point doesn’t sit inside her mind at all – the human mind cannot ever contemplate infinity, just as it can’t contemplate the size of the universe or the true meaning of life.

  Double-figured numbers have some unexpected colours. For example, the number 40 is black, although it is made up of 4 (red) and 0 (translucent); 45 is a sort of plum colour. That’s the thing with mixing numbers: it’s not like mixing paints; you can’t always predict what you’re going to get. The number 32 is turquoise, for example, and the number 17 is pink, as is the number 15; 28 is brown, and 37 is blue. Pi is light blue, and e is navy. Julie’s favourite number, i, is cream.

  Julie prefers odd numbers to even numbers, and she is suspicious of whole-number squares, but not their square roots. In the end, any number can be a square root; any number can be a square. And whole-square numbers are vain, like club singers or mobile DJs – not as sexy as they think they are; not as sexy and remote and beautiful as prime numbers, which manage to be remote even though, to the naked eye, there are more of them. (In fact, of course, there are an infinite number of both.)

  Luke is slowly falling asleep with his head half on and half off Chantel’s knee. As Luke becomes more sleepy, everyone becomes more quiet. Now the room’s silent except for the hum of the computer and the sounds of everyone’s breathing. After a few minutes Chantel gently moves her leg, and Luke’s head lolls on to the bed. David gets up from the floor and yawns.

  ‘Better make a move,’ he says softly.

  ‘I’d better go too,’ Chantel whispers. ‘Sorry about the beer.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Julie says. ‘Sorry I freaked out.’

  ‘If there’s anything I can do . . .’ Chantel says.

  Julie smiles. ‘Thanks. It was really good to meet you.’

  ‘Shall we all go for a coffee sometime?’

  ‘Sounds good to me,’ Charlotte says.

  Julie nods too. ‘Yeah. We should do that.’

  David looks at Chantel. ‘Did you say you had some draw?’ he asks her.

  ‘Yeah,’ she says. ‘Do you want to come round mine for a smoke?’

  ‘Yeah, wicked,’ he says, grinning. They leave together.

  When David and Chantel have gone, Charlotte and Julie put Luke to bed.

  ‘He’s fucked,’ whispers Charlotte.

  ‘I know.’ Julie’s voice is choked.

  ‘Hey, babe? What is it?’

  Julie wipes her eyes. ‘Don’t worry about me.’

  Charlotte puts her arm around Julie’s shoulders. ‘Hey. Come on.’

  ‘You don’t know how stupid and crap I am,’ Julie says.

  ‘Why? Oh God. Let’s get you home.’

  ‘You’ll have to stay at mine anyway,’ Julie says. ‘It’s really late.’

  ‘Yeah, and you’re going to tell me
everything.’

  ‘I’m so worried about him,’ Julie says, looking at Luke.

  Charlotte looks too. ‘I know.’ She pulls Julie towards her and cuddles her, smoothing her hair down.

  ‘I missed you,’ Julie says.

  ‘I missed you too.’

  As they leave, Julie remembers to switch on the air filters to get rid of the last of the cigarette smoke in Luke’s room.

  Chapter 24

  It’s almost six o’clock and Julie’s supposed to be going home but hardly any of the night staff have turned up at The Edge. Everyone’s been talking about the big train derailment that happened at Hatfield yesterday but now they’ve turned their attention to the crisis of there being no staff tonight. It’s Wednesday, and Wednesdays are usually quiet, but lots of bookings seem to be coming in for some reason that no one understands.

  ‘For fuck’s sake,’ says Heather.

  ‘Jesus fucking Christ,’ says Owen.

  ‘Shall I try ringing Stewart again?’ asks Heather.

  ‘Yeah,’ says Owen. ‘Tell him if he doesn’t come in, he’s sacked.’

  ‘I can’t do that. It’s illegal.’

  ‘I don’t fucking care.’

  Stewart is usually the weekend night-chef.

  ‘I’m not staying,’ David whispers to Julie. ‘They can fuck off.’

  They’re all standing at the counter where people place their take-away orders. Heather goes off into the office, presumably to make more phone calls.

  ‘Looks like it might be a long night for you two,’ says Owen, smirking.

  David goes out the back. Julie follows him.

  ‘I can’t fucking stand any more of this,’ David says.

  ‘They can’t expect us to stay,’ Julie says. ‘We’ve been here all day.’

  It’s been a shit day as well. Heather’s been on her back about the management thing, not understanding why she isn’t excited about it. And Luke phoned, which was weird. He phoned, and he said something about having a plan. Charlotte was there with him, and they had a plan, but he didn’t say what the plan was. Julie’s tired. She didn’t get any sleep last night. She told Charlotte about the panic, and the fear, and Luke, and The Edge, and Charlotte said ‘Mmm’ a lot, and Julie felt more dirtied than cleansed by her admissions. It was only afterwards that Julie remembered she never wanted Charlotte to know about her mess inside; that Charlotte had given her a kind of normality, because she believed she was normal, and, incredibly, sort of cool.