Laying the Ghost (7 page)

‘Our mums must have forgotten what it was like, being young and needy,’ Mimi went on, at the same time scanning the boys for Joel. ‘Mine went to a boarding school and she said it was like being banged up in prison. They were only allowed out on Saturday afternoons, and not till they were over sixteen. Severe sexual deprivation, that was. Against human rights, gotta be.’

‘God! Horrendous!’ Tess gasped. ‘Mine went to a mixed comp and said there was a place behind some old air-raid shelter where everyone went for sex. You had to book a time – someone kept a list of half-hour slots for lunchtimes. She probably just meant a bit of snogging, though. God, I hope so.’

Mimi shuddered. ‘How horrible. Everyone’d know what you were doing and who with. They might even come and watch. Gross.’

‘I asked her about that – she said nobody watched. They just wouldn’t. Only she said all that in front of my dad and he got a bit antsy and started going, “Oh, nice to know there was a fine sense of honour back in the old days.” Sarky sod. But then he is a lot older than her. Sorry Mims, I shouldn’t talk about dads, really, should I?’

Mimi shrugged. ‘No matter. It’s not like I haven’t still
got
one, is it? He was always away somewhere working anyway, so it’s not much different for me. Only for Mum. Poor old Ma. What must it be like, starting again at her age? I mean, she looks all right, you know. She dresses pretty cool, in a Jigsaw and Joseph way, and she’s got an edgy haircut and stuff but she’s not a, like, twenty-something babe. When she and her mates go out, they don’t exactly go out on the pull, do they? It’s all nice cosy suppers and stuff where they’ve all known each other for about
ever
. And they all wear cashmere because it’s
warm
. If “warm” is top of the list for something to wear, she’ll never get anyone new.’

Tess said nothing, her attention now fixed on her quarry outside Tesco. Mimi thought some more about her mother, thought about whether she’d be all right on her own and if she’d
be
on her own for ever and ever; would Mimi end up scared to leave home, feeling she’d got to hang about and take care of her, like someone out of Jane Austen? But then if she
did
get someone else, how vile would it be if he moved in and they all had to get used to bathroom-sharing with this new bloke, who might eye up Mimi’s body in a non-parental way? Nobody had so far, not that she’d noticed, not unless you counted old pervs on the bus or on the beach.

Mimi had decided Joel might be a good safe one to lose her virginity with one day, but even he had barely spoken to her so far. All she knew was that he might (or might
not)
be in the group of boys up ahead outside Tesco, and that he might, or might not, be hugely surprised at the fantasy plans she had for him. She also knew that Tess should have given her a bit more notice before dragging her off the bus. How much would a text have hurt before they’d left their homes? If she’d known, she’d have slicked on plenty of lipgloss and brushed her hair. It was a gift from the heavens to have the long blonde stuff, but it wasn’t looking its best, straight from bed and tatted. She fluffed it out, running her fingers through it and getting them caught on the tangles. She hoped he’d just think it was attractively wind-blown.

‘Y’all right?’ Tess had drawn level with the boys, who had stopped can-kicking for a moment to give the girls a lookover. Mimi, hanging back behind Tess, saw Joel coming out of the shop with cigarettes. He quickly unwrapped the pack, throwing the cellophane into the bin outside the store. That was something, she thought, at least he was litter-aware, even if the smoking was a disappointment. But hey, you couldn’t have everything. That was something her dad had said last time he and her mum had been rowing. The house was full of shouting, all echoes and anger. ‘You want it all, Nell, that’s always been your trouble,’ he’d said. And then he’d said the really weird thing: ‘I was never going to be that “all” for you, was I?
You
always knew that.
I
always knew that.’ And then he’d stormed off somewhere in his car and her mum had run
upstairs
and cried and Mimi had found her later, asleep on the bed with the photo album she’d kept from her college days beside her.

‘ ’Lo,’ Joel suddenly said to Mimi (not to Tess, she noticed, not to Tess) as he lit a cigarette. He looked uncertain, as if he had no ideas for words that should follow on from this.

‘Hi Joel,’ Mimi said. Did he actually even know her name, she wondered? She’d run into him several times, just sort of around, and at a couple of parties. He knew Tess’s brother – they played in the same St Edmund’s rugby team.

Mimi sat on the bench outside the shop and watched as Tess revved herself up to full-scale hyper-giggle with the Stuart twins. It wasn’t that she wanted to be
like
Tess exactly, but Mimi did very much envy her easy way with the boys. Apart from all the hair-flicking and pouting and posing, she did have a talent for casual, endless chat. It might be about nothing at all but they found her fun to be with. Mimi, on the edge of the group, waited silently in the cold with her bag on her lap and wondered how snobby it would look if she simply got up and carried on walking to school. Joel was also looking a bit out of place. He leaned against the shop door frame smoking his cigarette, but then stubbed it out halfway through and binned it.

‘That’s it. I quit,’ he told her.

‘I’m supposed to be impressed?’ Oh, that came out
wrong,
challenging and a bit snide. He looked surprised.

‘Sorry – I mean, why now? You just bought those.’

‘Yeah, but it’s a rubbish habit. I just do it at this time in the morning. I don’t like habits – they can rule your life. If you want to change you have to do it when you think of it. If I waited till I’d got through the pack it might be too late.’ He came and sat close beside Mimi on the bench, his leg against hers. ‘And if you get habits, you get stuck. You need your brain free for thinking new stuff.’

‘What about when your life changes and you’ve got no choice about it? Aren’t things like comfort habits useful then? Like chocolate or, I dunno, your favourite misery music?’ If he asked, she’d tell him about her parents separating. But he wouldn’t ask, not yet. He didn’t know enough about her, probably actually nothing at all.

Joel was silent for a moment, looking closely into Mimi’s face. She smiled, so did he. Nice teeth, she thought. Gentle, blue eyes. His hair was the kind of mid-colour that would be blond by July. It curled at the ends like Johnny Borrell’s and had a shaggy, soft look. She had to stop herself reaching across and touching it, to see if it felt soft like a dandelion clock.

‘What do you want to do?’ he asked her.

‘What, now? Um … well, I’ve got double geography in twenty minutes.’

Joel laughed. ‘No, long-term. University, life, all that …’

‘Ah,
big
questions.’ Mimi looked across at Tess, who was now having a go at keepy-uppy with a football belonging to one of the Stuart twins. She was hopeless but didn’t care. Her short school kilt was flipping up and down and the boys were laughing, urging her to have another go, probably because they liked looking at so much leg.

Mimi thought about how to answer Joel. She didn’t know, really, what she wanted to do, but she also didn’t want him to think she was some no-brain, clueless loser who didn’t care.

‘Oh, you know … make a difference in the world, ideally. I mean, who wouldn’t?’ she said. Ugh, that was about as big-time as you could get, she thought. Way too much – it sounded cringingly slimy. ‘I meant, you know, like kind of build bridges or something.’

Joel’s eyes widened. ‘What,
really
? Engineering! You and me both!’ He looked at her with shiny admiration. ‘Isambard Kingdom Brunel. He’s
the
man. Now there’s someone to aspire to.
Big
hero.’

‘Um, yeah. Right.’ Mimi looked at the pavement, confused. She’d heard of Brunel, but the bridges she’d had in mind had been more of the world-peace variety and even that sounded pompous and silly. Too late. The enthusiasm on his face wasn’t something she’d want to wipe out.

‘Yeah. Um, engineering’s a possibility.’ She smiled at him. ‘You’re not one of those boys who thinks it’s not for girls, are you?’

‘No! God, no,’ Joel said. ‘We could, maybe …’ He looked hesitant, shy, suddenly.

Mimi felt her insides tighten. He was going to ask her out, oh sweet joy … She looked at him, waiting.

‘Um. Only if you’d want to, I mean. Not everyone would but if you’re interested …’

‘Oh I am.’ Aagh! Too keen! Mimi bit her thumbnail and willed herself to keep quiet.

‘Science Museum? Or when it’s warmer, go out and look at Brunel’s bridges, like Marlow or Maidenhead or something? And Paddington station.’

‘Joel … are you …?’ What
was
he talking about? Did he have a secret life as a trainspotter?

‘OK, sorry … no, you’re right.’ He looked crushed. ‘It’s just, Brunel is
such
a hero. Amazing dude. A minority interest, I’ll admit, though. So … no, probably a bad idea.’

‘No! Really, whatever you like. I’ll tag along. Truly – I’d like to.’ No way was she going to sit on the end of a platform waving a tape recorder to catch the sounds of engines, but he was very sweet and hey, what was wrong with stations? They all had coffee shops, didn’t they? Mimi picked up her bag and stood up. ‘Text me, call me,’ she said, digging out a scrap of paper and writing her mobile number down for him. ‘Any time; whenever. I’ll come and look at bridges and stuff with you.’

‘So what was all that about then?’ Tess asked as they
hurried
towards school. ‘Don’t think I didn’t clock you getting cosy with the boffin. Don’t tell me you were discussing the combustion point of magnesium with him.’

‘Bridges,’ Mimi told her, smiling to herself. ‘We talked about Brunel and bridges, OK?’

‘Yeah yeah. That’ll be the jet lag. Get over it, babe, before you start enjoying maths and stuff.’

Mimi kept quiet. She actually
did
enjoy maths. Physics, too, but Tess didn’t need to know that.

The Body and Soul studio smelled of smoky lavender from Advanced Yoga’s candles. The sickly scent seeped out to the corridor from under the nearest of the two glass doors. Inside, the class had reached the end-stage of lying still under blankets, meditating in the dark and the silence. Nell, waiting outside on a padded bench for her own class to start, could see the dark shapes of the bodies lined up, motionless and calm in tidy rows. Shockingly, they reminded her of scenes of makeshift mortuaries after disasters. She tried to delete this horrific image from her head and turned instead to the noticeboard on the wall outside the club’s spa, where current special offers were listed. A non-surgical facelift rather appealed, she decided, wondering if it would be more or less effective than the painful-sounding chemical peel or laser dermabrasion.

‘If you have that, you can never, not ever again, get your face in the sun.’ A long, angular woman appeared beside
her,
pointing at the peel information with a hand that seemed to be no more than bones and paper-thin skin.

For a moment Nell wondered what she meant: why would she want to get her face in the
Sun
? It wasn’t her newspaper of choice.

‘Oh – right, I see what you mean. Sunshine. Why is that?’

‘Epidermis welded to your dermis. Sure as your knee bone’s connected to your thigh bone. Your skin goes all thin and sensitive.’ The woman’s voice had a touch of Irish about it. She laughed and looked at Nell, possibly calculating how careless Nell had already been, sun-wise, daring to get a tan on her holiday. Not that it was much of a tan now. Most of it seemed to have flaked off on the plane home. Then several days of grim, late-February weather, combined with keeping extravagantly fierce but comforting heating on in the house, had left her looking blotched and patchily freckled. It wasn’t so much a laser peel she could do with, more a deep chiselling with a wallpaper scraper followed by an all-over skim of fresh new plaster.

‘Are you here for the Stay Safe class?’ Nell asked.

‘I am. A lone parent, that’s me. You can’t be too careful. It only takes one sick loon and you’re dead meat. I’d carry a knife but that way you can end up doing time in Holloway and with the kids in care. If I want to be some chick’s bitch I’ll go and hang out in the Candy Bar.’

‘And by the time you’ve found the knife …’

The woman laughed. ‘Yeah, down the bottom of your bag among all the lipsticks and your phone and the old tissues and Tesco’s receipts and stuff. I’m Abi, by the way.’

‘Hi – I’m Nell. And I do hope we’re not the only ones coming …’

They weren’t. As Advanced Yoga trooped out, looking wide-eyed and spacy like baby birds, Nell and Abi were joined by several other potential classmates. There was a tubby, grey-bearded Hell’s Angel (or so his T-shirt proclaimed), a large, fierce-looking mother with a reedy, frail-looking teenage son who kept his eyes fixed on the floor, several middle-aged women looking wary on their own, an assortment of chatty twenty-something girls all with their hair pulled back into ponytails, and a couple of reluctant-looking middle-aged men. Nell, remembering Kate’s last-minute phoned instructions, quickly scanned these latter for potential date material as they filed into the studio to wait for Steve, their instructor, and found them generally unappealing. It was a relief. She honestly didn’t want to start fancying anyone just yet. If ever, in fact. But Kate would demand a full report.

‘He’s a t’ai chi grand master,’ the Hell’s Angel was telling one of the ponytails, ‘or was it tai kwando?’

‘Or tie-dye,’ Abi hissed at Nell, giggling. And then, as they looked up, there he was. Already on the room’s platform in front of the big studio mirrors, setting up a flip chart and
waiting
for them to notice him. At a guess, he was a couple of years older than Nell was, about half the bulk of the Hell’s Angel, and neatly built – more sprinter than shot-putter, with a defiantly youthful athletic bounce to him.

‘Hi. I’m Steve. I’ll get to know each of you by the end of class one,’ he said by way of a curt greeting.