Just a Girl, Standing in Front of a Boy (15 page)

‘What did you do?’ I ask. I haven’t heard this story before.

‘How do you mean?’

‘Well, did you fight for her?’ I ask.

‘Um. I didn’t. No.’

‘Not at all?’ I exclaim.

‘Well, no, she made her choice and it wasn’t me. I had to respect that.’

I look about at the scrunched up, disbelieving faces of the ladies.

‘You should have fought for her, Al,’ I tell him.

‘But, but… how do you fight for someone?’

‘Oh, well, what do we think, ladies?’ I ask. ‘If you love someone how should you fight for them?’

‘Dramatically,’ Philippa volunteers.

‘Yes!’ Marge agrees. ‘You write her a beautiful letter. You get a plane to fly in the sky with a banner. You surprise her with a song.’

‘Hang about, I’ve heard Al sing,’ I counter.

Al looks baffled.

‘You should have fought for her, Al. You might have won her back,’ I say, gesturing to my lady back-up team.

‘Would you have wanted me to fight for you?’ he asks.

‘What?’

‘Damn. Did I just totally ruin talking about our relationship in an ambiguous way?’

‘Me?’

‘Yeah.’

‘But we weren’t going out.’

‘Well, what would you call it?’

‘Sleeping together because it was cold,’ I whisper, and then remember Mum is in the room.

‘Is that all you thought it was?’

‘I didn’t… you didn’t… hang about.’

‘Is that what you thought it was?’

‘Al, I don’t know. We never discussed it.’

‘I know, and then you came in one day, going on and on about this posh meal that Matt had taken you on and it was all over.’

‘Why didn’t you say anything?’

‘You’re my friend, Fan.’

‘Damn, this is so riveting but I don’t think we should really be here. Right, come on, troops, let’s go to the White Hart for last orders,’ Philippa says, quickly ushering the others out of their seats and towards the door. ‘Now, you two,’ she points to Al and me. ‘I love you both. Do you want me to stay and umpire?’

‘No,’ we both say quietly, not taking our eyes away from each other.

‘I just can’t believe you didn’t say anything,’ I whisper.

‘I just can’t believe you didn’t think it was anything.’

‘Bye!’ Marge calls.

‘Bye,’ my mother echoes.

‘What a night,’ Philippa shouts.

We’re left alone.

‘Al, I’m really, really sorry,’ I say stepping closer to him.

‘Don’t be sorry. You couldn’t help it. You chose him over me.’

‘I didn’t think you were an option.’

‘It was pretty incredible, Fan, the sex we had because it was cold.’

‘I know.’

‘And we had it a bit when the heating was fixed as well. So it couldn’t have just been because it was cold.’

‘No, no it wasn’t. I just assumed you didn’t want any more than that.’

‘Why would you do that? You’re beautiful, and funny and the most incredible woman I’ve ever met or am likely to meet. From the second you mind-tricked me into having a lamb doner, I’ve loved you, Jenny.’

‘I need to sit down.’ I sink my weight down onto the sofa.

‘Sorry, I shouldn’t have said all that.’

‘No, but… but… why say it now?’

‘It just came out.’

‘No, why not say something when I was crawling into your bed and taking my clothes off. Don’t you think the fact that you never offered to take me on a date made me think that it was just sex to you? So, yes, I was excited when Matt took me on a date, because I’d waited and waited for you to ask me out. But you never did.’

‘Oh, Jen, you’re beautiful. I thought you could do so much better than me. I was waiting for you to say something to me.’

‘You were only the second person I slept with.’

‘We completely buggered it up, didn’t we?’

I nod sadly and look up at him. He kneels down and wraps his arms around me in a big glorious hug. No one doles out hugs of the calibre that Al does. I sink into the hug.

‘Totally screwed it all up,’ I say, pulling back a bit so I can see him.

‘Hmmm,’ he agrees.

‘Hmmm,’ I say.

And I don’t quite know how it happened but we seem to be kissing.

We didn’t just stop at kissing. Nope. We had full on… you know… yes… that. I would very much like to stay in bed for the entire day. I open my eyes, Al is facing me on the pillow.

‘Was it a full moon last night?’ I ask.

‘It was from where I was standing.’

‘Hilarious.’

‘How are you feeling?’

‘Like I will probably cry in the shower.’

‘Oh, really?’

‘It’ll be the wedding we’ve both been invited to on the eighteenth August.’

‘Will it? Whose?’

‘Mine, you plonker.’

‘Oh, yeah.’

‘And what about Gemma?’

‘Oh, yeah. I quite liked her. Supposed to be seeing her tonight actually. Do you want me not to?’

‘No, go and see her.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Really?’

‘Really. It’s cool.’

‘Yeah, but is that girl cool, which in my experience is anything but cool.’

‘No, it’s please go out with Gemma. I did a bad thing for the sisterhood by sleeping with you. But as you’re only in the early stages of courtship and we had had a sexual relationship misunderstanding in the past I may be forgiven. I’ll check with Philippa. I may need to atone.’

‘I hear the sisterhood word and it’s like everything just becomes white noise. But you don’t mind if I go out with Gemma tonight?’

‘No.’

‘OK, but if you change your mind on that, call me or text me and let me know.’

I smile.

‘What?’

‘Nothing.’

This is why Al and I could never work together, because neither of us will ever take the lead. Al won’t say, ‘I’m going to tell Gemma to back off, and see where this goes with us,’ and I’d never suggest it either. I reckon a relationship needs at least one person in it who is capable of taking a risk, of being rejected, in order to get things off the ground.

I’ll have to tell Matt that I’ve been unfaithful. It’s the right thing to do and I hate secrets and lies. It would be completely impossible for me not to tell Matt. I couldn’t imagine sitting there at dinner with him, knowing that I’d slept with someone else and hadn’t told him. I shiver at the thought. But if I tell Matt that I slept with someone else, then I guess, well, I guess, that will be us over. That thought fills me with panic, but then so does the thought of staying with him, for some reason.

‘Are you all right?’ Al asks.

‘Yeah, I better get up and go and cry in the shower.’

‘Do you want me to come with you?’

I smile. ‘I think Mum would have a heart attack.’

‘Oh, yeah.’

I sit up on the side of the bed and start putting my clothes on.

‘So, Al. Thank you very much for a very enjoyable evening,’ I say when I’m dressed and standing up.

‘It’s my pleasure.’

I get to the door.

‘Fan?’

‘Hmmm.’

‘A couple of things, I’m just reminding you of a couple of things, that I sort of assumed you knew but I don’t think you do. One, you’re beautiful.’

‘Hardly.’

‘I don’t know what you see when you look in the mirror but it’s not what the rest of us see, I know that. You’re hot, Fanny Fan-Tastic. There’s not a man who wouldn’t.’

‘Al!’

He holds up his hand to stop me interrupting. ‘Let me continue. I want to say some stuff because, well, I know that you and I won’t end up together, I think we had our moment, but what I do know is that we’ll always be mates. I’d take a bullet for you, Fanny Fan-Tastic,’ he says seriously, nodding.

I smile.

‘So, as your mate I can say that you are beautiful. You have this big smile that lights up the coldest of cold hearts, eyes that dance, yes, I know I sound like a wanker, but I mean this, eyes that make you feel like you’re the only person in the world. Your legs, your body, I could go on. You are as mad as a warehouse of the craziest frogs, I admit. But in the most brilliant way. I just want to say this because it’s like you don’t realise how special you are. I could kill that Steve Wilmot fella, if what he did made you so insecure.’

I stare at him. ‘That was such a lovely speech.’

‘I meant every word.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Although, thinking about it, you know that bullet I said I’d I take for you?’

‘Yeah.’ I nod.

‘If at all possible could it be in the leg?’

‘I’ll see what I can arrange.’ I smile.

‘You’re one in a million, Fanny Fan-Tastic.’

‘So are you, Al,’ I say and mean it. ‘What made you so insecure?’

‘Just being a funny-looking bugger.’ He laughs, and hurls a cushion at me. ‘Now sod off and cry in the shower.’

I am having the strangest day. I was in the shower for a long time this morning, crying. I was happy with Matt. I know he wasn’t particularly nice the other evening but he was tired and jet-lagged; normally he’s very personable. He definitely didn’t deserve to have me sleep with someone else. And it was Al. How did that happen? Stupidly, the thing that was, and is, confusing me most is Joe King. It feels as though Joe King is rattling the cage of my life. If I’m being honest, then I’ve worried more what Joe King will think of me having slept with Al, than I have about what Matt will think about me sleeping with Al. And yet Matt is the man I’m supposed to be marrying. It doesn’t make sense. I don’t make sense. I’m sure I used to. I’m sure pre-Joe King I used to make perfect sense. But now I’m all higgledy-piggledy.

Anyway, when I eventually got out of the shower, Mum was standing in the corridor waiting for me. I wasn’t overjoyed to see her. Oh, God, I thought, I poured out a lot of stuff last night, I can’t do feelings this morning. I wondered how I could escape her.

‘I’ve called in sick for you, Jenny,’ she said.

‘What? How? Who did you speak to?’

‘I called Marge and told her that I thought you needed to get out of Tiddlesbury for the day. I thought you might be confused and want to clear your head.’

‘And what did she say?’ I enquired.

‘She said she totally understood,’ Mum says, her eyes wide and innocent.

‘What did she say really?’

‘She said you owed her two days. She’s quite a negotiator.’

I didn’t answer.

‘Was that wrong of me?’

I shook my head. She smiled.

‘Get dressed. I thought we’d get the train to Skegness.’

So I nodded and got dressed and now we’re in Skegness. And I slept with Al last night. It doesn’t get more random.

I’ve never done a sicky in my life and I dread to think what’s going on at the surgery. But I have had a surprisingly lovely day. We didn’t speak much on the train, which was a relief. We both stared out of the window at the land racing past us. When we arrived we headed straight for the beach and kicked our shoes off.

‘Ah! The feel of sand beneath your feet!’ Mum said, and she smiled as though she was really content. ‘You know sometimes I think that this is what it’s all about.’ She sighed. ‘Feeling the ground under your toes and the wind on your cheeks. We over-complicate things, don’t we? When really there’s nothing like the simple pleasures.’

I didn’t answer. But I liked what she said. We walked towards the sea, carrying our shoes, and paddled for ages. The water was freezing, but we waded out as far as we could. The sky above us was blue and cloudless. Mum threw her hands in the air.

‘I used to come here as a child,’ she said, and again I was reminded of Mum pre-Dad. Mum pre-me.

Then we walked along the beach for a long time, again not speaking. It was such a relief not to have to speak. We were starving when we got back to the main drag so we got fish and chips. The most we’ve said to each other today has been a debate about whether you are still allowed to eat cod, and if so whether we should get the large one (we did, of course).

We sat on the sand and ate our warm chips in the cool breeze and to be honest, it was the best fish supper I’ve ever had. I’m stuffed now, although that’s hardly surprising – Mum didn’t have much appetite so I ate a fair bit of hers, too. Emotional trauma, it seems, doesn’t stop me eating. We’ll probably have to head back to the station in a little while. I don’t want to leave. I like gazing at the ocean.

‘Sometimes you need to see the sea to get a perspective,’ Mum says. She reaches across and squeezes my hand, and for the first time since she came to stay I don’t flinch or try to fidget myself away from her touch. I just glance at her briefly and smile and then get back to staring at the sea.

‘I haven’t seen the sea for years,’ I say.

‘I know, I thought that when I went to Wales. I thought, How have I forgotten you? The sea’s always been one of my favourite things. Oh, I love the sea, I would tell people. Yet I hadn’t seen it for years.’

‘Hmmm.’

‘Well, for what it’s worth. I think Al’s a very nice chap.’

‘Yeah, he is,’ I say and my voice goes up and my eyes fill with tears. ‘Sorry, I’m not very good at men.’

‘Don’t be sorry. Get it all out,’ she says calmly. ‘No point in leaving it in there,’ she coaxes. And something about the way she says it makes me feel as though we have all the time in the world. It’s a pleasant sensation. And I snivel for what must be a few minutes, grateful that we don’t have to be anywhere or do anything.

‘You know, Jenny, I’m so terribly sorry,’ she says. Then she leaves quite a pause and makes a groaning sound. ‘Oh, I’m so sorry.’

I pull my eyes from the heaving waves to look at her face. Her plaintive eyes are fixed on me.

‘I didn’t know you were bullied and I didn’t know that boy had done that to you.’

I shake my head.

‘I just thought… oh, Jenny, I don’t know what I thought. That you were being a teenager, I suppose, that you’d pushed me away. But’ – she squeezes her eyes closed and then opens them again – ‘I should have asked, I should have made you tell me what was wrong. I should have been better.’

Now, I close my eyes because I know what she’s going to talk about. I can sense it. And perhaps we do need to discuss it. No perhaps. We do. She’s going to talk about the day I left home when I was seventeen. Nearly eighteen. Crikey, the world should have been at my feet at eighteen, but all I could do was lie in bed. I spent weeks and weeks in bed in my childhood home. There’s a saying about a piece of straw breaking a camel’s back. Well, Steve Wilmot might just as well have broken my back because after that happened I literally couldn’t move. Just couldn’t move. You take for granted that you’ll be able to get up every morning and keep going. But I couldn’t. I wouldn’t. I didn’t. I’d left school. My life was ahead of me. Supposedly. But actually my life had collapsed. Other kids were probably out enjoying their freedom, the hot summer, being able to legally buy booze, while I felt exhausted right down to my soul. I would sleep and sleep and still I’d feel sleepy. I would hear Mum and Dad downstairs. They were always shouting at each other. They rowed a lot that summer. About me.

‘Do something with her, for God’s sake,’ my dad would bellow. ‘I’m going out.’ Sometimes I would hear my mother weeping.

‘She’s useless,’ he would spit, and a door would slam. I would lie upstairs and agree with him. I was useless. Apart from a rather brilliant Rowan Atkinson impression, I was incapable of anything.

Then one day, they came into my room. My dad first, he hauled me out of bed.

‘
Pull yourself together
,’ he bellowed. ‘
We’ve had enough. For God’s sake! What’s the matter
?’

There was hatred in his voice, and I deserved that too.

‘Jenny, we’ve had enough, you’re an embarrassment,’ he said. My mum was there too, there in the doorway, she stood with her arms folded. She didn’t say anything and I don’t think I’ve ever really forgiven her for that.

After they left my room, I didn’t get back into bed, I called Philippa and asked if I could stay with her for a while. I never again spent a night in my childhood home. Luckily, Philippa’s dad was a GP, he understood I was depressed, and took me to see someone. A breakdown, that’s what people say I had. It took a long time to get over. I never went to college. Instead, I spent months trying to find the right antidepressants and the right dosage. I had a bit of counselling, and a lot of Philippa. And eventually, by the time I was twenty-one, I was much, much, better, I’d come off the drugs and I was working at the surgery. I was still worried about sinking back to that place though, so that’s why Philippa gave me the Smiling Manifesto. To keep the dark days at bay. Shortly after that I met Al and moved in with him. The Smiling Manifesto seemed to do the trick. But to be on the safe side, I avoided my father as well, and steered clear of any man who made my bits twitch. I’ve always tried to keep away from anything that could break me again and take me back to that horrible place. It’s why Joe King terrifies the life out of me and why I really didn’t want to talk about all this with Mum.

‘I wished I’d asked you what was wrong.’ She closes her eyes and laughs a very sad laugh. ‘I never asked you what was wrong. What sort of a mother does that? And then once you’d gone it was too late. I thought Jack was having an affair, you see, at the time, and I didn’t think I could cope with him or with you. You know, you always imagine that at some point, when you become middle-aged, you’ll become wise. But it doesn’t happen like that. And do you know, there’s no point in having regrets. But I do regret that time. I wish I’d held you, and made you tell me why you were so unhappy.’

‘I wouldn’t have let you,’ I say.

I look at her and I realise that for years I’ve resented my mum for not sticking up for me on that day and all the other days. I’ve repeatedly had the thought, What sort of mother doesn’t help their child when they are so desperately unhappy? But I know that even if Mum had done what she now says she wishes she’d done, it wouldn’t have changed anything.

‘I wouldn’t have let you,’ I repeat.

‘Oh, love, well, then I should have taken you to get help.’

‘It was probably best I went to Philippa’s. Dr Flemming diagnosed pretty quickly that I was having a breakdown.’

‘Oh, God, Jenny, I’m so, so sorry.’

‘Don’t be, don’t be, but, well, the only thing I want to know is why —’ I stop myself. Perhaps there’s no point in asking.

‘What?’ she asks.

‘Why didn’t you come and get me? Come and try to get me back from Philippa’s?’

She sighs.

‘Oh, love, Jack put you down so much when you were at home. He was a tough-love dad. He said he’d had a tough-love dad himself, he thought it had made him strive for success. I realised that was damaging for you. But don’t forget, you pushed me away. You wouldn’t let me in. I didn’t know what to do. That’s why I didn’t stop you leaving home or come and get you. I wanted you to stay, Jenny, but I also wanted you to fly free, to find out who you were. I know that sounds terrible but you did that, Jenny. I thought it was better that I didn’t see so much of you because I knew you were finding your happiness. But it wasn’t easy, I missed you terribly and I am so, so sorry.’

‘Don’t be,’ I say, and I mean it. I’m looking at her and I don’t feel like crying at all. I feel weirdly unburdened. Except… ‘I should have asked you how you were feeling. I could hear you arguing.’

‘But I was your mother.’

‘I was your daughter. I should have been your friend. So promise me, please don’t have any regrets about it. No regrets, Mum, honestly.’

‘No,’ she smiles. ’No regrets. There’s no point.’

We both look back at the sea.

‘Wow,’ I say.

‘What?’

‘I really didn’t want to talk about that time. But… well… it was all right.’

‘Hmmm.’

‘Let’s make it different between us from now on,’ I say, looking at her.

‘Friends?’

She holds her hand out for me to take.

‘Friends,’ I say, taking it. ‘Good friends.’