The Queen of Bloody Everything Page 15

  It’s under the sports section of yesterday’s Times, and it’s mild curiosity rather than concern that makes me pull it out, because the last year has tick-tocked by so steadily and smoothly that I’ve forgotten Neverland ever came with a crocodile, or that wolves prowl my enchanted forest. But when I flick over the covering letter, see what’s attached, I feel the hard walls of my world tremble as if they are no more than twigs. Because there, on official vellum, with a glossy photograph glued in the centre, is a picture of a house.

  ‘What’s this?’ I ask.

  Harry, who is busy being sexually enlightened by Cosmopolitan, looks up from the magazine and wrinkles her nose. ‘That? New house.’

  ‘What?’ I giddy as the room spins, as the world stops turning. ‘You’re moving?’

  Harry shrugs. ‘Mad, huh? I mean, I’ve only got a year left and I’m not bloody coming back after that. Not except for Christmas. But Mum wants a waste-disposal unit or whatever and Dad doesn’t really get a say, so . . . yeah.’

  ‘Is it just . . . are they thinking about it?’

  ‘Huh?’ Harry looks up again. ‘Oh. No, they’ve put a deposit down, I think. They’re, like, buying it off-plan or something. You know, because it’s not built yet. That’s the show home.’

  I feel a sudden sense of being unanchored, of drifting on open water, the swell of the water turning my insides. And I cling to those words – not built yet – like a life raft, like wreckage, all the while conjuring landslides, sinkholes, an ancient burial ground, that will foil their plan. But the truth is, I am lost. Tom is gone, Jimmy is leaving for London and university, and this – this has spun my safe, serried world so far off its axis that I am dazed, dizzy, desperate.

  ‘Did you know?’ I ask when I clatter in the back door.

  ‘Know what?’ you ask, fiddling with brushes and turpentine, the chemical taint catching my throat.

  ‘That they’re moving.’

  You don’t even ask who they are. You know exactly who I mean – because who else could I possibly care about? ‘Bloody woman,’ you say. ‘It’s all her idea. David’s perfectly happy where he is. It’s her childhood,’ you add. ‘Deprived. That’s why she’s always wanting new things. Bigger things. Why can’t she see when she’s already got it bloody made?’

  This is the first I have heard of you coveting anything of Angela’s. But even so, I don’t think then to ask how you know this strange detail; I assume, I suppose, that it has wended its way over the wall or along the grapevine that clings to the brickwork of all small towns. The same way you knew that Tom had dropped out of joint English to swap to single-honours politics. That David had found condoms in Harry’s coat pocket when he was looking for a set of keys. That Angela had agreed to her party. ‘Of course, David had to buy her off with a weekend at bloody Ragdale,’ you added, another detail I should have noted, that should have rung alarm bells.

  ‘What will we do?’ I ask.

  ‘When?’

  ‘When they go?’

  You shake the brushes, dump them on the draining board. ‘Christ knows,’ you say. ‘Lock that bloody gate for a start, I suppose.’

  ‘But . . . it won’t be the same.’

  You open the fridge, then change your mind, grab instead at the packet of Camels. ‘So make the most of it,’ you say. ‘While it lasts.’

  The house is teeming now, glitter-flecked bodies draped on sofas, and against the staircase, ironic pop pumping from the stereo and mixing with the two glasses of punch I’ve dared to down so that my heart hammers and my head sings with possibility.

  This could be it, I think. This is West Egg and Harry is the Great Gatsby, throwing the last hurrah. So I must make it count. I have to seize the moment. ‘Carpe diem!’ scream the vodka and gin as they helter-skelter through my veins. And I do, I seize the moment, or something anyway. So that just an hour later, I am lying on my back, my skirt pushed up, my top pulled down, under the naked weight of Jimmy.

  He’d been begging for months. And it’s not like we hadn’t done everything else. So why should this last step be any different, I asked myself. And though I failed to find an answer, failed to quell the nagging doubt, the wagging finger, the voice that said Because it is, I knew I would do it anyway. Because we fitted. We were one of the growing procession of the paired-up, the couples who slunk two by two into the Noah’s ark of the common room, sitting on each other’s laps on the sofas, slipping our hands into each other’s pockets. In this louche world, we ruled, the Traceys and Michelles and Darrens long consigned to YTS schemes and army barracks. So that now, with Harry on one side and Jimmy the other, I was the Queen of, if not Bloody Everything, then Something at least.

  And I’d already tried once. Or rather he had. In the back of his brother’s Escort parked up Seven Devils’ Lane on the night of my seventeenth birthday. Me drunk on B-52s, him pushing his luck. He got it in, only an inch, but it hurt, and I wasn’t expecting it, and the shock made me yelp, then seconds later throw up a torrent of brown, Baileys-smelling vomit out of the car door.

  But now I am here, my body alive with liquor and kisses, and I wonder why I’ve always thought my virginity was so precious anyway, something to be saved, protected. Now I want to get rid of it, in the same way as I’ve taken down my poster of Clare Grogan, packed my monkey away in a suitcase; just another marker of childhood, really, no more than that. I mean, Harry’s already done it with four different boys, Tina Fraser with five, and they don’t seem to be eternally damned, or only in a good way.

  Jimmy pulls away, a string of saliva hanging between our lips like a silvery spit tightrope.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ he asks. ‘You’re not, you know, that wet.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ I insist. ‘Just. You know. There’s people downstairs.’

  ‘Hang on.’

  He sits up in the single bed and reaches over to the stereo, presses play on whatever cassette is already in the tape deck. The sound of Pink Floyd floods out, almost drowning out the thump-thump from downstairs, and filling the room with Tom. Because, oh yeah, didn’t I mention it? The scene for my impending deflowering is none other than Tom’s bedroom.

  I tell myself this is necessity – Harry’s in hers with Ricky, the spare room is being used as some kind of dealers’ den, and there’s no way I’m risking getting anything on David and Angela’s pristine sheets. But there’s an element of deliberateness too, bravado born of alcohol and desperation: a need to show him who I am now, that I don’t need him, that we are done. Though in truth I know we never really started.

  ‘Better?’ Jimmy asks.

  I tug my knickers down, and pull him back on top of me. ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘God, yes.’

  And so, after a fumble with a condom and two false starts, I finally feel Jimmy push inside me, feel myself being slammed against a sticker-decorated headboard to the unwitting rhythm of Dave Gilmour singing ‘Wish You Were Here’. An irony not lost at the time, nor when, three minutes later, the door bursts open and I see framed in a halo of landing light, not an angel, but the prodigal son.

  Tom.

  ‘Oh. Shit!’ I push Jimmy off – who yelps in shock, or possibly even pain – and pull the covers up. ‘I’m sorry . . . we . . . I—’

  But I don’t get to articulate any excuse I might be able to conjure in my drink-and-endorphin-addled mind, because Tom backs up and pulls the door closed again. I know he’s seen me, though, and Jimmy. He couldn’t miss us. And there is no shred of ambiguity as to what was going on.

  ‘Fuck,’ I say, and lean over the side of the bed, scrabble around for a top.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Jimmy demands, before pulling me back, pushing his still-wet, wide lips onto mine.

  I turn my head so that his tongue slides, doglike, down my cheek. ‘No, Jimmy.’ I try to wrest myself out of his hands, but he grips my wrists, pins me down.

  ‘Stop it,’ he says as I wriggle, fight underneath him. ‘Calm down. You’re being ridiculous.’

  But w
hatever I felt is gone now, adrenaline flooding it out along with the alcohol. ‘Jimmy, please. I can’t.’

  ‘Because of Tom?’

  I nod.

  ‘Why the fuck do you care what he thinks? He clearly doesn’t give a shit.’

  I smart at that, a wince to go along with the pinch of his fingers on my pale skin.

  ‘I just can’t,’ I plead. ‘Not tonight.’

  Jimmy stares at me, his face red, contorted. With desire? Or disdain, maybe. For several slow-ticking seconds I don’t know what he’s going to do, whether he might ignore me, do it anyway, finish what he started. But then he snorts, flings my arms away from him and climbs off me, the ride over.

  ‘Call me when you’ve worked out what the fuck is going on in your head,’ he says. He yanks a grandad shirt over his still-sweating body, pulls up boxers then black trousers – trousers I’d unbuttoned myself less than fifteen minutes ago, pushing my hand into his shorts to feel the hardness of him, to feel how much he wanted me, to show him I wanted him.

  But I don’t want him. Not now.

  I want Tom.

  But he is gone, and this night is over. And so, just seconds after Jimmy slams the door, I drag my top down and my tights up around my sweat-and-God-knows-what-else-sticky thighs, stumble along the landing, down the stairs and out of the back door, running shoeless across the wet grass, only remembering when I have slammed the gate behind me that I have left my Docs under Tom’s bed.

  I go to retrieve them the next morning, arriving scrub-faced, sour-breathed at the back door at the same time as David and Angela pull up at the front.

  The kitchen is already wiped clean of evidence, bin bags rattling with cans already stacked at the dustbin; the acrid tang of Dettol almost managing to mask the faint aniseed whiff of Pernod vomit.

  ‘Well, it barely looks as if you got up to anything at all.’ David walks in, still in his driving coat.

  ‘I . . . hi,’ I blurt, managing to feel both outsized and gawky as I clutch the side of the kitchen counter to steady myself.

  ‘So is Harry still asleep?’

  I don’t know what to say, whether to shrug or just guess at a ‘yes’ in the hope that she did at least spend the night here. ‘I—’

  ‘Yup. Obviously.’

  I feel my painfully empty stomach contract as Tom walks in, piece of toast in one hand, J-cloth in the other.

  ‘All right, Dad?’

  David nods, wandering, almost out of place in his own home.

  Tom finally turns to me. ‘Soooo . . .’ He lengthens the word out, takes a bite of toast, chews, still focused on my face. ‘You disappeared pretty sharpish last night.’

  I blurt out a jumble of words. ‘Yeah . . . sorry . . . because this . . . and I . . . well . . . then . . .’

  He raises an eyebrow, pulls his half-smile into a lazy smirk. ‘Interesting, Jones. Very interesting.’

  ‘Tom?’ comes the shrill call of Angela who has finished her inspection of the hallway. ‘Is that you?’

  ‘Yup,’ he says, then gives me one last smile before sloping off to greet the mother ship. I don’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed.

  ‘Shall I . . . ?’ David is standing, baffled, in front of the toaster. ‘Would you . . . like something?’

  ‘No,’ I say. Then change my mind. I need food. Food will make all of this all right again. ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Please. Two slices.’

  ‘Jam?’

  I nod and slide onto a bar stool, grateful for a tether, the way he is grateful for something useful to do with his hands.

  I am cramming in a too-big bite from a slice of strawberry on white when David walks off, redundant again, and Tom wanders back in, with a bleary-eyed Harry in tow. I swallow, but my mouth is dry now and I feel the bolus of toast trap in my throat.

  ‘All right?’ She nods at me without really looking, then slumps on the nearest stool.

  Tom grabs the stack of newspapers off the breakfast bar in front of her so she can slide forward, head resting delicately on folded arms.

  ‘God, I feel like seven kinds of shit.’

  ‘Heavy night, I take it?’ Tom is still studiously rearranging scattered ornaments. I am still studiously avoiding eye contact.

  ‘Something like that.’ She turns her head so she can look sideways at me. ‘Where did you get to?’

  ‘Home,’ I manage to cough out.

  ‘Right. Why?’

  Tom laughs then, opening the sluice-gate to a rush of adrenaline so fierce and full that I dare to look at him, dare him to say anything.

  He holds his hands up. ‘Whatever.’

  ‘God, what are you two? Some fucking conspiracy? Jesus, I need coffee.’ Harry gestures at the filter pot.

  Tom pours her a cup, plonks it down between us on the counter. As he does so he leans over so I can feel his hair on my neck, his breath on my cheek. ‘Your boots are in the hall, by the way.’

  Whatever shred of doubt, of hope, I had clung on to dissipates, leaving me rudderless, dizzy. All these years I have depended on that one possibility – that Tom will be my first, my only. ‘I didn’t know you were coming back,’ I say quietly.

  ‘Nor did I,’ he says. ‘Until Della dumped me and I figured what better way to celebrate than with a houseful of fucked-up sixth-formers.’

  I feel a surge of something as this sinks in – sorrow, maybe? Self-hatred?

  ‘I— About last night . . .’

  ‘What happened last night?’ Harry asks. ‘Did I miss something?’

  Tom shakes his head. ‘Nothing happened,’ he says, as if it is no more than a matter of fact. Then he grasps the estate agent’s details that are still stacked in with the newspapers, and wanders back to the table, breathing nonchalance. ‘Fuck, that is one ugly house.’

  ‘Language, Tom, please.’ Angela clips neatly into the kitchen. ‘David?’ She looks around. Finds who she is looking for rooting in the utility room. ‘David, there’s vomit in the en suite. Can you . . .’

  ‘Yes. Yes, of course.’ He hurries off, head down.

  ‘Well, that is the last time we let either of you have a party here,’ she announces.

  ‘What about at – ’ Tom peers at the particulars – ‘Nine The Beeches? Or will we ruin the generous through-lounge with south-facing French windows? Thatcherite wankers,’ he adds under his breath.

  ‘I heard that,’ his mother snaps. ‘And you’re in enough trouble as it is. Do you know there’s a pair of . . . of ladies’ underwear in the office?’

  ‘Well, they’re hardly mine,’ Tom protests. ‘Ask Harry . . . or Dido.’

  I flinch at the insinuation, and the daring look that accompanies it.

  But Angela just shakes her head, as if exasperated at both his attitude and the fallacy that it could be me. ‘Harry, can you sort them out, please?’

  ‘Later,’ Harry groans.

  ‘The last time,’ Angela hisses to herself as she pulls a pair of rubber gloves out from under the sink. ‘David? David! Why aren’t you wearing Marigolds?’ And with the pink plastic fingers dangling like limp puppet hands, she stamps back up the stairs to supervise.

  ‘I like the new house,’ Harry says to no one in particular. ‘I get a walk-in wardrobe.’

  ‘Surprise, surprise,’ Tom chants. ‘So, what do you think, Di?’

  ‘I . . .’ I feel the toast flip-flop inside me, as if aware of the dilemma. But there have been enough lies, has been enough game-playing already. ‘I hate it,’ I tell him.

  And he nods then, all the guile and sarcasm of the last few minutes gone, just like that. ‘I knew you would,’ he says.

  I smile back then. ‘I should go. It was . . . good to see you.’

  He laughs, but a real one now. A tender one. Almost sorry. ‘You too.’

  ‘Harry?’ I try. But her head is back down on the counter, and her breathing slowed to a steady semi-snore. ‘Can you . . . ?’

  ‘I’ll tell her you’ll see her tomorrow.’

  ‘
Thanks.’

  I turn to go, heading for the back door.

  ‘Di?’

  ‘Yeah?’ I turn back, expectant, hopeful.

  ‘Your boots.’ He nods towards the hallway.

  I feel heat flood my cheeks again, chewed-up toast twitch and slop in my stomach. ‘Oh, right. Course.’ Then, to hide it, and in a last display of hope, I change tack, throw him a line. ‘See you, then.’

  But he doesn’t say it then. Doesn’t say anything at all.

  Because maybe this time it’s true. Maybe he won’t see me.

  And as I walk down the terracotta tiles of the Lodge’s wide lobby, I count the ways in which I love this house, and hate the one in the picture. I hate its mock-Tudor gable, as if it’s trying to be something it’s not whilst laughing at those who fall for it too; I hate the shining surfaces, the shining family posed ridiculously next to a pristine three-piece suite. But most of all I hate it because it means the gate to Wonderland will be closed now. I hate it because it means he will never be waiting on the other side of the wall. I hate it because it means this is the end. Because I won’t have a chance to rescue this paradise lost. Unless . . . unless . . .

  That afternoon Tom heads back to Hull. Two weeks after that the prospectus for their English department drops heavily, pointedly, on our doormat.

  Harry raises her eyes to the nicotine-stained ceiling of our kitchen, takes another Silk Cut drag. ‘Could you be any more obvious?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Oh, come on.’ She taps ash into a saucer, looks me in the eye. ‘He is never going to fuck you.’

  ‘Who?’ I say, I lie.

  ‘Duh. Tom.’

  ‘Who said I want to fuck him?’ I mumble.

  ‘What, like that isn’t why Jimmy dumped you?’

  ‘What? Who told you that?’

  ‘Jimmy,’ she says. Like it’s obvious. Which I guess it is.

  I should be glad he didn’t tell her the whole sorry story, I suppose, though I know he’s spilled a whole jarful of other secrets and lies to whoever would listen – that I’m a prude, that I’m a prick-tease, that I’m probably a lesbian anyway.