Going Out

by Scarlett Thomas

  Charlotte’s rolling another cigarette. ‘OK,’ she says, frowning. ‘Yeah, I get that.’

  ‘So minus 1 times minus 1 is actually 1. If you usually drank one bottle of vodka a day and you did that for minus 1 days – in other words, if you didn’t do it for a day – you’d have 1 bottle of vodka as a result. So if 1 times 1 is 1, and if minus 1 times minus 1 is also 1, then we can say that 1 has 2 square roots: 1 and minus 1. Similarly, the square root of 36 is 6, and also minus 6.’

  ‘What’s this got to do with imaginary numbers?’

  ‘Well, we’re still looking for the square root of minus 1, remember. So if it’s not in fact minus 1, because minus 1 squared is actually 1, then what is it?’

  Charlotte lights her cigarette. ‘Pass,’ she says. ‘I don’t know. If it’s not minus 1 – and I get that, now – then what else could it be?’

  ‘Exactly. There isn’t anything else that it could be, so it doesn’t exist.’

  ‘This is pretty interesting, actually,’ Charlotte says, sipping more tea. ‘Right. So if it doesn’t exist, then . . .’

  ‘Basically, mathematicians invented imaginary numbers to function as the square roots of minus numbers. So that’s what they are. You write them as values of “i”, which is the square root of minus 1. The square root of minus 4 is therefore 2i.’

  ‘So what’s the square root of i, then?’ Charlotte asks, after thinking about this for a few seconds.

  ‘You so don’t want to go there,’ Julie says, laughing. ‘Can I have a roll-up?’

  ‘Yeah, sure. So how do you know all this stuff?’

  Julie shrugs. ‘School, reading, the Internet.’

  ‘You never went to university, did you?’ Charlotte says.

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I failed my A levels. Didn’t I ever tell you that?’

  ‘No.’ Charlotte wrinkles her forehead. ‘So what did you do, fail them on purpose so you wouldn’t have to leave Luke and your safe life, and to punish your mum for leaving you or something?’ She laughs. ‘That would be so you, babe.’

  Julie can feel her face going red. This is typical of Charlotte. Things that everyone else somehow misses are always completely obvious to her.

  ‘Why are you saying that?’ Julie says.

  ‘Well . . . you’re too clever to have failed. But you are fucked up enough to fail on purpose and probably get some kind of cheap anarchic thrill out of it. I know you.’

  ‘Yeah. You do.’

  ‘So you did, then?’ Charlotte says, her eyes wide. ‘You did fail on purpose?’

  Julie looks down. ‘It doesn’t matter what I did, does it? This is my life.’

  ‘Does anyone else know?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Wow. So did she notice?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Your mum. Did she notice you’d failed and make a big fuss about it?’

  ‘Not really. She didn’t do anything.’

  Charlotte shakes her head. ‘You poor thing,’ she says.

  It’s cold. Julie gets under the covers. When Charlotte puts her cigarette out she does the same. They lie there in silence for a few minutes, not touching.

  ‘Did you miss not going to university?’ Charlotte says eventually.

  ‘I don’t know, do I? Since I’ve never been, I don’t know what I missed.’ Julie suddenly laughs. ‘Oh, God, I sound like Luke now.’

  Charlotte laughs too. ‘Seriously, though, did you want to go?’

  ‘I don’t know really. At the time, I suppose I did.’

  ‘And now?’

  ‘Now? No, I don’t think so.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Aren’t you tired?’ Julie asks, ignoring Charlotte’s question.

  ‘A bit. I’m still a bit psyched from the journey and everything. So why not?’

  Julie sighs. ‘I just like being a waitress and reading about other stuff in my spare time. I wouldn’t want to do a maths job or a chemistry job. Did you know I was good at chemistry as well? I liked the equations. But anyway, I’m scared of chemicals, so I definitely wouldn’t want to do a chemistry job. I liked physics, too, although I’m hardly going to become an engineer or anything. And maths? I don’t want to be in business or do economics or accountancy. I’d like to solve a theorem, or a problem that’s never been solved before. I suppose that’s my dream, even if it is a bit of a stupid one.’

  ‘Like thingy – that French one?’

  ‘Fermat’s Last Theorem? Yeah, that’s been solved now. There’s a maths institute offering million-dollar prizes for solving certain other unsolved problems, though. There’s one problem in particular – I think about it when I’m waitressing. That’s basically it. I’m a waitress trying to solve maths theorems and I’m happy with that. No one knows about the maths, by the way, so you’ve got two secrets out of me tonight.’

  ‘You like having a secret life, don’t you?’

  Julie hasn’t ever considered the idea of a secret life in relation to herself before but she does have one. She suddenly thinks about Chantel’s grandmother.

  ‘I suppose so,’ Julie says. ‘Although it sounds a bit weird when you say it like that.’ She frowns. ‘I suppose it’s the only thing that’s completely mine. Plus, Luke’s my only real friend apart from you – and I haven’t seen you for ages – and he’s not interested in maths or numbers or physics, so it’s not like it’s a total secret, because I haven’t actually got anyone to tell who’d be interested, or understand what I was going on about. But . . . Yeah, I do quite like it that way. I like having my own thing.’

  ‘So why are you so sad,’ Charlotte says, ‘if you’re so happy?’

  ‘Other stuff. Luke. My dad. My mum. Just stuff, you know.’

  ‘Do you think you’ll be able to solve this problem or theorem – or whatever it’s called?’

  Julie laughs. ‘Yeah, right. Me and the other zillion people working on it.’

  ‘Do mathematicians use words like “zillion”?’

  Julie laughs again. ‘Look, there’s a very, very small chance I could apply for a maths scholarship without needing A levels – please don’t tell anyone about this – and when Luke’s better I might think about it.’

  ‘That would be really cool.’

  ‘I also know four computer-programming languages. I learnt them for fun last year. So I don’t have to be a waitress. I just enjoy it. So I might do maths, or I might continue being a waitress. Who knows? I might decide to sell flowers by the side of the road. Well – it would have to be a B-road, but still.’

  ‘Wow, babe.’ Charlotte laughs. ‘You’re a total free spirit.’

  ‘I have to be, don’t I? I haven’t had any other choice. Also, I’ve been taught by the best.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well.’ Julie moves slightly in the bed. Her breathing feels different. ‘You.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘I was really depressed before you came to Windy Close. I learnt how to be a free spirit – if that’s what it is – by copying you. You were the one who taught me that it doesn’t matter what your job is, or how much money you’ve got, or how many people you employ or have power over, or even how often you wash your hair or what clothes you wear – what matters are the books you read, and the thoughts you have, and being true to yourself, whoever you are. I’ve never bought into that corporate bullshit of going to university so you can get a good job and move to London and spend all your money on rent and lunch and tights just so you can feel important. I like being down to earth. I’ve always been like that but meeting you made me realise I’m not a freak, and that it’s OK.’

  ‘I taught you that? Fucking hell.’

  ‘Well . . .’

  Charlotte laughs. ‘When you put it like that my life doesn’t sound like such a fuck-up.’

  ‘Your life isn’t a fuck-up.’

  ‘It so is.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Where do I start? Me and Mark ditched univ
ersity to go travelling, so I haven’t even got a degree. We did too many drugs. He died – and I bet you all the drugs I made him take didn’t exactly help him to not have a brain haemorrhage. I drowned in guilt. My parents disowned me. I did more drugs. I have no future. My life totally sucks . . . I could go on.’

  ‘Come on, Charlotte. If I’m a free spirit, you definitely are.’

  ‘Maybe we should be free spirits together, then,’ she says, really quietly. ‘It would be a whole lot more fun.’

  ‘But you’re going to India.’

  ‘And you’re going to do some kind of weird maths thing.’

  ‘Only if I can get there on B-roads. They probably won’t even accept me.’

  Charlotte laughs, then turns over. She falls asleep breathing into Julie’s hair.

  Julie dreams about driving fast through water.

  Chapter 40

  By three o’clock the next afternoon everyone’s up except Luke. David and Chantel have been talking in low voices to each other for most of the day so far and Charlotte’s been pottering about with Helen, pestering her about her time at Greenham Common. Luke’s going to stay in bed until it gets dark, and Julie’s vaguely reading the Independent on Sunday, eating toast and marmalade, and thinking that she wishes she was in motion again, like yesterday.

  ‘Where’s the nearest big town to here?’ Chantel asks Helen suddenly.

  ‘What for?’ Helen asks.

  ‘Stuff . . . I’m not sure. A bookshop, big shops in general . . .’

  ‘There’s Wantage but for a good bookshop you’d need to go to Oxford.’

  ‘Oxford’s a city, isn’t it?’ Chantel says.

  ‘Of course it is, stupid,’ says David, smiling.

  ‘I want to go there, then,’ Chantel says. ‘Can we get a cab there?’

  Julie looks up from the paper. ‘I’ll drive you,’ she says.

  ‘Super cool,’ says Chantel. ‘I was hoping you’d say that.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ David says to Julie.

  ‘Yeah. I might even try a red road.’

  It’s not raining.

  ‘Fucking hell, what’s that?’ David says once they’re outside.

  ‘What?’ Julie says.

  ‘Up there. Blue sky. Fuck me.’

  ‘You scared me then,’ Chantel says. ‘I didn’t know what you meant.’

  In daylight, the van just looks like a van. Last night it felt like a mini-universe; their whole world, like an orange womb on wheels.

  ‘You sure about this red-road stuff?’ David says, as they get in.

  ‘Yeah,’ Julie says. ‘Bring it on.’

  ‘So what’s happened to you, then?’ Chantel asks once they’re on the A338.

  ‘Huh?’ says Julie, concentrating.

  ‘Why aren’t you freaking out?’

  ‘She drove through this big puddle yesterday when you were asleep,’ David explains. ‘It gave her a buzz.’

  ‘How do you know it gave me a buzz?’ Julie says.

  ‘I was there, mate. You were well buzzing.’

  Julie smiles. ‘I wanted to do it again afterwards.’

  ‘I know you did.’ David looks at Chantel. ‘You should have seen it,’ he says to her. ‘Me and Charlotte were fucking bricking it and Julie’s like some kind of fucking kid going down a slide or something – again, again. It was mental.’

  ‘I like water,’ Julie says.

  The red road isn’t too bad. It’s a single-lane main road, and there’s a lot of traffic, so Julie just has to concentrate on following the brown Sierra in front of her. And she’s already decided that she’s just going to follow the signs to Oxford from now onwards and not worry about which roads she goes on. She’s fucking terrified but it can’t be that bad. She looked at the map before she set off anyway and the bit of dual carriageway into Oxford looks a bit like the section of the A12 that goes into London. Julie’s hoping for a similar forty-mile-per-hour speed limit, lots of traffic lights and plenty of slow-moving traffic. As they get closer to the city centre, Julie remembers she likes town driving and that something about the density of the traffic and the lack of open spaces around her makes her feel almost invincible. Without really noticing, she finds she’s driving more like the way she used to drive when she was eighteen, nipping out to overtake slow Metros and buses at two-lane junctions, cutting it fine, getting a thrill from occasionally cutting it very fine. Julie had forgotten she was even capable of this – and in a VW Camper, as well.

  Why? Something about the floods, and Charlotte, and telling secrets. And maybe something about seeing her mother. Not that seeing her mother has been great so far, but it’s been real, and comforting, and she still exists, and Julie knows what her house looks like. At the next set of lights, she races a Mini and wins.

  David shakes his head. ‘You’ve gone feral,’ he says, smiling.

  It’s almost four o’clock when they get to the centre of Oxford.

  ‘Where are we going, then?’ Julie asks Chantel, when she’s parked the van in a multistorey carpark.

  ‘A bookshop first, then a travel agent.’

  ‘A travel agent?’ Julie says. David and Chantel just smile.

  ‘Why don’t we all meet back here at five?’ Chantel says.

  Oxford.

  Julie sits in the van and looks out at the dirty concrete walls of the carpark. She’s been to Oxford once before: to do the entrance exam for mathematics & philosophy, the course she probably would have done if she hadn’t failed her A levels. They offered her a place conditional on her obtaining three A grades as long as two of them were maths and further maths. She could have got those grades easily but she didn’t. Would she still be sitting here if she’d got the grades and gone to Oxford? Probably not. She’d probably know a better place to park.

  Coming to Oxford to sit the test was one of the last things she did with her mother and father together. They all drove up in her father’s Volvo. While Julie took the test her parents went for coffee and cakes in a nearby teashop and looked around some of the city.

  ‘Would you really want to come here?’ her mother asked her as they drove through the old city on their way home.

  Julie looked at her mother’s face. Helen was frowning as if she thought there was something wrong with Oxford University. Julie knew that look very well. Her mother was objecting to some whiff of patriarchy, power and influence she could sense in medieval-looking honey-coloured buildings all around them.

  ‘I’d love it,’ Julie said.

  The rest of the way home Helen read a magazine she’d picked up in an alternative bookshop and Julie replayed the maths test in her mind as if she’d just taken part in an exciting sporting event or theatrical production. Her dad listened to a Stone Roses tape over and over again. Later it would be discovered that his art-student girlfriend had given him the tape as a birthday present.

  Julie gets out of the van and finds a small newsagent a couple of streets away. She buys three cartons of Ribena and lots of sweets. Then she goes back to the carpark. She drinks two cartons of Ribena and eats all the sweets while she scribbles numbers on an oily scrap of paper from the glove box in the van. At about five she stops and rubs her eyes. The light isn’t very good here. At ten past five, Chantel and David walk towards the van, holding hands. Julie looks at them as they get closer. She does a double-take. They’re actually holding hands? God.

  In her free hand, Chantel’s carrying a Waterstones bag. She and David get into the van and Chantel starts taking items out of the bag. She gives David two envelopes, then hands three book-shaped packages to Julie, each in a paper bag, sellotaped shut. One has a C written on it, one has an L, and the last one has a J.

  ‘Don’t open these until you get back,’ Chantel says.

  ‘Huh?’ says Julie. ‘You sound like you’re not coming back with me.’

  ‘I’m not,’ Chantel says. ‘I mean we’re not. Me and David.’

  ‘Oh . . .’ Julie frowns. ‘Where are you going?’

>   ‘We’re going to America,’ David says, waving the envelopes. ‘Get my balls fixed. Go surfing. Chan’s just got the tickets, look.’

  His eyes sparkle as he waves the tickets around in the half-dark of the van.

  ‘America?’ Julie says, grinning. She looks at Chantel. ‘Really? You’re going to America so David can get cured?’

  ‘Yep.’ Chantel grins. ‘David’s taking a year off university, if he can. We’ve been planning this all day. We’re going to go and stay in a hotel for the next couple of nights so we can have our passports sent to us – I hope your mum doesn’t mind us not going back there, but David’s never stayed in a hotel, so I thought it would be nice. Also, your poor mum doesn’t really have enough room for us all. I’ve spoken to my mum and she thinks I’m a bit mental but she’s OK about it. I’ve just got to spend this money. It’s pissing me off now.’

  ‘Oh, wow,’ is all Julie can say. ‘That’s . . . amazing.’

  ‘Tell me about it,’ David says. ‘I thought she was winding me up this morning.’

  ‘That’s the most romantic thing I’ve ever heard,’ Julie says.

  Chantel laughs. ‘Well, we’ll see. Dave’ll probably ditch me in a month.’

  ‘Might give it two,’ David says.

  Chantel’s still laughing. ‘We’ll just see how it goes,’ she says.

  This is still the most romantic thing Julie’s ever heard.

  ‘Neither of us have ever been abroad,’ Chantel says. ‘It’ll be an experience, anyway. I like the idea of travelling. I suppose our journey’s going to be a bit longer than yours, but if it wasn’t for you, we wouldn’t be on a journey at all, so we wanted to say . . .’

  ‘Thanks,’ David finishes, leaning over and kissing Julie awkwardly on the cheek.

  Chantel hugs her next. ‘Yeah, thanks,’ she says. ‘And say thanks to the others as well. I got you each something – only something small. Well, it’s books, you can probably guess that.’ She laughs. ‘But still don’t open your package until you get back. I’ll be embarrassed, because I’m shit at choosing books.’

  David and Chantel are both getting out of the van. This is happening so quickly.