by Vivien Brown
‘Don’t be daft.’ I pulled at my tight top, making sure it hung a little lower, and smoothed out any creases my skirt might have suffered during the drive here in Tilly’s dad’s car. ‘I haven’t made any plans to meet up with Paul at all.’
‘You mean he didn’t ask you!’
She was right, of course. Things had certainly cooled since that lunchtime in his room and, as we weren’t studying a lot of the same subjects, our exam timetables rarely coincided and we had hardly seen each other at school.
‘I’ve been busy revising. There are some things that are more important than boys …’
Tilly laughed. ‘If anyone else had said that I just might have believed them, but since when have you worried about putting school work first? And besides, the exams are over now so he’s got no excuse.’
‘He doesn’t need an excuse. If he wants to see me he knows where I am, and if not then I’m really not bothered. Plenty more fish in the sea.’
‘Well, you’ve changed your tune. I thought he was Mr Wonderful. The perfect man.’
‘Oh, that’s enough about Paul Jacobs. There’s no such thing as perfect. Come on, let’s get inside and find a drink. It’s free, after all.’
‘Yeah, if all you want is fruit juice or Coke!’
‘Can’t see them providing alcohol, can you? As far as they’re concerned, we’re all just kids. But I know as well as you do that there’s a little bottle of vodka hidden at the bottom of your bag.’
‘That’s just where you’re wrong,’ Tilly giggled. ‘It’s gin! But you’re not getting any of it if you abandon me for Paul … or any of those other fishes in the sea.’
‘No chance. All I want to do tonight is dance and drink and have fun, knowing I will never ever have to sit another exam again.’
‘Definitely not staying on for A levels then?’
‘I’m not sure there’s much point. Unless the unimaginable happens and I suddenly get a load of A grades. Fat chance of that! Even my mum and dad have given up on me, and I’m never going to match up to my sister, so I may as well get out there and start earning some money. If only work didn’t look so horribly boring.’
‘It doesn’t have to be.’ We picked up two paper cups of lemon squash and found ourselves a corner from where we could watch what was happening on the dancefloor but still just about see who came in through the door.
‘You’re definitely coming back in September then?’
‘Yeah. If I want to be a dentist …’
‘A dentist? That’s the first I’ve heard about that.’
‘Well, you don’t know everything about me. So, if I’m going to be a dentist, I’m going to need some decent qualifications. And I am going to work hard, I’ve decided. No getting side-tracked, especially by boys.’
‘Tilly, you have never shown any interest in boys, so it’s hardly going to be a sacrifice, is it?’
‘Well, from what you told me, I don’t actually think I’m missing much.’
‘What I told you was secret, so don’t you go blabbing …’
‘As if I would. But I wish I’d been there, if only to see that teddy on his bed.’
‘Well, I only saw it for a few seconds before he knocked it onto the floor, but I think it might have been wearing a football shirt.’
‘That figures. More of a mascot thing than something to cuddle. Boys and their football …’
‘There were actually a couple of other balls in the room, you know. Ones I was paying more attention to.’
Tilly didn’t get it at first, and then she laughed out loud, jiggling her cup as she sloshed gin into her lemon squash and accidentally splashed some onto her hand. ‘Yuck!’ she said. ‘That’s something I do not want to think about. Looking at pictures in Biology was bad enough. All those wrinkles and hair and stuff. How you let them anywhere near you I don’t know.’
‘I don’t think I will again.’ I stared out into the gloom, my foot tapping to the music, hoping I might see him come in but also hoping just as much that I might not.
‘What? Not ever?’
‘Maybe, one day. But not him. Not Paul Jacobs. It was sort of necessary, you know, the losing my virginity thing, but I think next time I’d like it to be with someone who actually knows what they’re doing.’
Chapter 9
EVE
Waking up in my old bed at home still felt comforting, as if I had never really left. The narrow cracks in the ceiling which I was sure had grown wider, and the swirly pattern in the curtains where I had imagined I had seen pictures that were never really there. The gurgling sounds of the pipes coming from the bathroom next door. My dressing gown on the back of the door, my posters still above the bed, Buster snuffling at my hand asking to be walked, or cuddled, or fed. But beneath the familiarity I knew things had changed and would never be quite the same again.
I didn’t live here anymore. My life – my real life – was in Wales now, in that small room in Block P that I had asked to hang onto for a second year, and with my new friends and my English course. Oh, how I was loving that course. I was already living and breathing those wonderful novels and poems, absorbing the language and the imagery, spending hours reading and discussing and analysing. And being away from all that for the whole of the summer felt a bit like a bereavement, as if the better part of me had been left behind, and what I had brought home was just a shell. I was going to miss it all so much. And then, of course, there was Josh …
During the last few weeks at university Josh had slowly crept his way into my head and he was still there. I thought about him a lot. Well, most of the time, if I was being honest about it. I didn’t want to. I had gone away to study and to take the first steps towards an independent future, to push away bad memories and start again. And it was not as if Josh was ideal partner material, after all. His family lived too far away – somewhere near Leeds – so hopping on a train (or more likely, several trains) from Wales to see each other now he had left uni was not going to be easy, and certainly not frequent. He was destined to a future in a suit, a numbers man more at home with a calculator than a book. Someone who wouldn’t know a sonnet if it jumped up and bit him! And yet, despite our differences, or maybe because of them, we seemed to be drawn together. I liked being in his company, liked the feel of my hand in his, found myself wanting to rush and tell him everything that happened, as soon as it happened, no matter how silly or small. I still did it now, by phone, saving up all my news for our twice-weekly calls.
But something wasn’t right. Even as we’d parted at the station, I had pulled back as soon as I felt his arms close too tightly around my waist, his pelvis push against mine as we said our goodbyes. Was I being fair, expecting him to understand? And to wait? Or was I just being a coward? Because, even after all the months that had passed, I knew without doubt that it still all came down to Arnie. What Arnie had done to me, the panic he had planted in me, about boys, about men, knowing that he had taken away my curiosity and the wonder of discovery, and replaced them with a wariness bordering on fear.
I still woke up sometimes, sweating, panicking, with it all running through my head, second by second, like a film in slow motion, the sensation of him pressed into my skin, the smell and the taste of him rising up through my nostrils, making me want to cry, to run, to scream.
But Josh wasn’t Arnie. When I closed my eyes as Josh kissed me, I didn’t see Arnie, not anymore. I didn’t imagine myself in danger, didn’t want to run. It felt nice, right, as if I belonged there, and all I wanted was for it to stay that way, moving slowly, safely, at a pace I could deal with.
I had the long summer break now, to think about things, to work out what I wanted. We were young, I still had my degree course to get on with and he had a job to get started on, whether that turned out to be based in his own home town or somewhere further afield. There was no rush to plunge into serious territory. No rush to make declarations of undying love, to fall naked into whatever bed beckoned. Somehow I had managed to put all of
that off, to postpone any drastic decisions, to keep Josh in the limbo-land of maybe-one-day. But I couldn’t push him away forever, or I would risk losing him. As if distance didn’t already pose a big enough threat. There had to be a way to make it work, because I couldn’t let Arnie win. We had to be the winners: Josh and me.
I felt a thump as Buster hauled himself up, his back legs scrabbling about in mid-air for a few seconds, onto the bed. The old dog seemed pleased to have me home, my long absence already pushed aside as if I had never been gone.
‘Come on, Boy. Let’s get you walked, shall we?’ I climbed out of bed and hunted for clean underwear, a T-shirt and jeans among the clothes, most of them dirty, that I had brought back with me and that now lay in a heap partly in and partly out of my suitcase in the middle of the carpet. Sarah was stirring in the other bed, mumbling something that sounded like ‘Grow away’, before sinking back down into a snuffly sleep.
It seemed only fair that I take over dog duties for a while. Buster was technically mine anyway, and Sarah had done more than her share while I had been away.
The house was quiet, Mum and Dad not yet having emerged from their room. When I got to the foot of the stairs, I saw that the newspaper hadn’t even arrived on the mat yet, and I put that down to that paper-girl friend of Sarah’s having a bit of a lie-in now the school holidays had begun. It was only when I went into the kitchen and looked at the clock that I realised it was still only half past six.
The streets were empty, just an occasional car and the rattle of the milk float disturbing the silence. We took our time, with nothing much to hurry back for, and Buster seemed to relish the chance to investigate every clump of earth, every piece of litter, and sniff to his heart’s content at all the exciting smelly evidence that other dogs had been there before him.
I didn’t see him at first, the man coming towards me along the pavement on the other side of the street. He was dressed for work in an office somewhere, by the look of him. Suit slightly too tight, a plain white shirt and a not-quite-straight blue tie, a tatty brown leather briefcase dangling from his hand as he hurried along, head down. But once I had spotted him, even at a distance, even without a full view of his face, I knew who he was. Arnie O’Connor.
It was not cold that morning but I felt a shiver run through me. I didn’t want to look at him, and definitely didn’t want him to see me or run the risk of him coming over to talk to me. I should have turned my back towards him, walked off in the other direction or hidden behind a tree, but I found I couldn’t move. I just stood there, rooted to the spot, and I couldn’t look away.
He didn’t look up at all. He drew level with me, just yards away across an empty street, and then walked right past, probably off to catch an early train, his feet pounding the pavement, the wires and earpieces of a Walkman visible above his collar, utterly oblivious to my presence. I wondered where he was going, what job he did, what music he might be listening to, and then wondered why I should care. Because I didn’t. He looked ordinary, just some unremarkable man on his way to work. He didn’t look frightening or threatening at all, and I had the sudden feeling that even if he had looked at me he probably wouldn’t have recognised me or remembered who I was. I meant nothing to him and, in that moment, I couldn’t understand why I had allowed him, or the memory of him, to still mean so much to me.
***
Lucy and I sat side by side on the swings in the playground. She was my oldest friend and it had been far too long since we’d had the chance to spend time together and catch up on what was happening in our lives. In many ways we were entirely different. Lucy had no wish to go to university. She never had. Life through her eyes was a very simple and straightforward affair. You finished school, you found a job and you got married. Two babies, maybe three if the first two had not produced the required one-of-each, a little house with a garden, and life was pretty much complete. By the sound of it, she was well on her way. She was working at a florist’s now, a job that surrounded her with beautiful things, paid a decent enough wage and would, in time, mean that she could design and make her own bespoke wedding bouquet, and all the table decorations and buttonholes too. And Robert had done the expected thing on her nineteenth birthday, going down on one knee and spending the regulation one month’s salary on a ring. The wedding itself remained a hazy vision of rose petals and satin and yards of frothy white fluff, and was apparently unlikely to take place for at least three or four years, but that didn’t seem to matter at all. The dream was everything.
If only my own life could be so easily plotted and planned. But for me, there was so much more to cram in. I wanted to get my degree, develop a fulfilling career, hopefully in teaching, and perhaps travel a bit. And somehow I needed to include Josh in all of that. Not as the be-all-and-end-all of my life, the hub that everything else revolved around, as Robert so clearly was to Lucy, but as equals. I liked to imagine our lives being like the swings Lucy and I were sitting on now, swaying around, soaring up and away from each other every now and then, each on its own path, but always within reach of each other, the long stretchy chains keeping us close and making sure that when we touched back down we were still side by side. I shook my head to clear such fanciful thoughts.
Lucy was talking about her job, about a customer who had come into the shop and ordered six dozen red roses for his girlfriend, and another who had sent just a single rosebud, and which she thought was the more romantic of the two. I wasn’t sure there was a right or a wrong answer to that. Love, romance, sex, they were different things to different people. And none of it, none of the important stuff, was about roses, was it?
‘I saw Arnie yesterday,’ I said, right out of the blue. Lucy was still the only person I had ever told about that night at the party, the only one I could say my thoughts out loud to, and seeing him so unexpectedly was still very much in my thoughts that day.
‘Really?’ She pulled her swing to a stop, digging her heels into the tarmac, and turned to face me. ‘To speak to?’
‘No. Oh, no. I don’t think I would ever want to speak to him. No, he didn’t even see me, but I saw him. Watched him walk by …’
‘And?’
‘And what?’
‘Well, how did it make you feel? Didn’t you want to just rush up and smack him one? Or shout out and tell the world what he did? I mean, now you’ve had time to calm down about it all, you must want to … I don’t know, get some kind of revenge, or something?’
‘God, no. I don’t want to drag it all up again. I just want to forget about it, make it all go away.’
‘And has it? Gone away?’
I shook my head, closed my eyes and fought back the tears. ‘No.’
‘Oh, Eve. It’s been ages. It must be a year ago now, or more. You can’t let it upset you after all this time. Arnie’s just a scumbag who means nothing. Ignore him. Avoid him. Forget about him! You’ve got your Josh now, haven’t you? Who I am dying to meet, by the way.’
‘I’m not sure he is my Josh exactly.’
‘But he’s your boyfriend, isn’t he? You said you’d been going out. Meals, drinks …’
‘Oh, yes, all of that.’ I felt a smile force its way, unbidden, onto my face.
‘And you’re not seeing anyone else? And he’s not either?’
‘Well, I’m not, and I don’t think he is. Well, I bloody well hope not.’
‘Then of course he’s your Josh! So, tell me what he’s like. Do you have a picture?’
‘No, I don’t. I should have got one, shouldn’t I? To put in a frame by my bed and swoon over before I go to sleep every night.’ I laughed, but I could see she thought I meant it. She probably had one just like that of her Robert. ‘But he’s … well, tall, I suppose. Taller than me, anyway. And he’s got dark hair, and brown eyes, and he was studying Maths and Business, would you believe! How I ever got mixed up with someone who’s into Maths I do not know!’
‘Prospects?’
‘What do you mean, prospects? Can he keep m
e in the manner to which I’ve become accustomed? A man of good fortune? Lucy, honestly, you sound exactly like Mrs Bennet, trying to marry me off!’
‘Who’s Mrs Bennet?’ She looked bemused for a moment and I couldn’t really be bothered to start explaining. You’ve either read Jane Austen or you haven’t.
‘Oh, never mind. He’s finished his degree and he’s going onto a graduate-entry scheme at a bank, starting in a couple of weeks. Just waiting for the details to be finalised. So, yes, he has prospects as you call them. The chance of a good steady career ahead of him. But that has nothing to do with why I like him.’
‘Like him? Not love him?’ She stood up and pulled me along with her, making way for some children who were hovering nearby, waiting to use the swings, but luckily also giving me enough time to think before I answered her.
‘Well?’ she said, as we moved to a bench beneath the trees. ‘Do you love him?’
‘It’s more complicated than that, Lucy. To me love means some really huge all-encompassing thing. You know, being prepared to do anything for that person, not being able to imagine a life without them in it, giving myself body and soul …’
‘Aha!’ She lifted her fingers to my chin and slowly turned my face back towards her. ‘That’s the problem, isn’t it? The body bit of that sentence? You haven’t, have you? Given yourself …’
I shook my head. ‘Arnie O’Connor has a lot to answer for.’
‘Arnie O’Connor is a nobody. A loser whose brain is in his trousers. Only you can decide what to do, and when, and who with, and if you’re not ready, for any reason at all, then you don’t do it. Okay? Nothing to do with Arnie Knobhead O’Connor.’
‘And is that how it is with you and Robert? Not ready yet, despite all the years you’ve known him and the wedding plans and saving up for a life together?’
‘Not ready? Don’t be daft. We’ve been at it like rabbits for months now!’
‘Lucy!’ I was shocked. ‘After all you said about taking things slowly and saving yourself? When did this happen? And why didn’t you tell me?’