Precocious (20 page)

‘When you’re old enough,’ you said, ‘I’ll teach you to drive.’

We were on our way to London. I had passed it off as a ‘St Vincent de Paul Society outing’, and although in a rare moment of parental interest Dad had mumbled something about it being strange he hadn’t been asked to sign a form, I quickly persuaded him there were loads of us going, and we would only be away for one night, and these trips happened all the time, no big deal.

The closer we got to London, the slower the traffic became and the further away we felt from our old selves, our real lives.

In a jam, we kissed in the car. I suppose people might have looked through the windows but it felt as though we were in a protective bubble. There had been kisses, since the night at your house, but for me it was still a shock every time, and a sense I was watching myself from far away. The rush of blood to the head, the rattling words so loud I was amazed you couldn’t hear them. A voice:
It’s him, it’s him, it’s him, it’s him
, like a drum. The hot crush of your mouth, the taste of cigarettes and sweet coffee. Your hand on my hand, placing it in your lap, me pulling away, going on like this for a while, you smiling as though I was being coquettish, you liked it, probably thought it was a little dance, I just didn’t want you to hear the drum-voice in my head, or see or feel the shake in my hands so I would pull away and (eventually) you would let me.

‘You check in like a pro,’ I whispered at the reception desk.

It was the kind of hotel that made me want to whisper: a beautiful marble staircase, huge vases of lilies whose scent filled my throat. Muted music.

‘What do you mean?’ you laughed, signing a form.

‘You’re just very … casual,’ I shrugged. I took the key card from you: it said ‘family room’.

You were still allowed to feed the pigeons in Trafalgar Square, back then. We watched a young couple, dressed similarly in jeans and belted, black pea coats, sunglasses pushed back on their heads. He’d opened up a bag of crumbs and was surrounded by swooping and cooing birds; some resting on his arms, his shoulders, some appearing to peck at his hair. Behind the flapping of grey wings, I could see that he was grinning, and although his girlfriend was squealing and holding her arms up to her face, she was laughing.

‘Bloody flying rats,’ you tutted. ‘Ugh. Filthy.’

‘I don’t know,’ I murmured, mesmerised by the boy and his girlfriend, ‘I think they’re … sort of cute.’

‘Do you disagree with me on everything just for fun?’

‘I don’t think I do. Do I?’

‘Yup.’

‘I don’t.’

‘There you go again.’

‘Ha. Maybe.’

You smiled and linked my fingers with yours and I suddenly realised how far from home we were. I gazed across the square at the face of Big Ben in the distance, car horns and the chatter of unfamiliar accents and languages resounding in my ears.

I suddenly had a sense of being at the heart of the world.
When I grow up
, I thought,
I’m going to live here
.

We strolled, still hand in hand, looking askance at the people on open-top buses – ‘Tourists!’ we scoffed – not us; we belonged here.

It was as though I’d only in that moment realised that places existed all the time without me in them; that all over the world there were places where I could be, where
we
should be. Places we, you and I,
should
go to.

‘Istanbul,’ I shouted, ‘we should go to Istanbul.’

What a waste it seemed: life happening elsewhere.
But just for today
, I thought,
I am in it. Today it’s my life, and it’s full of possibilities.

You didn’t question my outburst, didn’t even look surprised, just squeezed my hand and said, ‘One day we’ll go to Istanbul, sunshine.’

Us in the mirror.

‘Look how good we look together.’

I nodded approvingly.

‘Yep,’ I said, ‘in London, we look good.’

Still bright in my mind, fifteen years on, what seems like a slow-running cinema reel of you laughing in the bedroom as I sang in the bathroom, my head dizzy with you, putting on lip-gloss that would soon be kissed away.

It was one of those months between winter and spring, when the air feels clean and everything is just below ground, waiting to push through. We lay on our backs in Hyde Park.

‘You remind me of someone I used to know. Have I ever told you that?’ I shook my head. ‘She was a writer, too. She wrote poems.’

My heart caught in my throat. You called me a writer. I rolled onto my side, rested my head in my palm.

‘What was she like?’

You smiled, right into the corner of your eyes, and for a moment I hated her for being the cause of that smile, but I wanted to hear.

‘She was like you. She was … different.’

‘In what ways?’

You laughed.

‘Well, she liked Fleetwood Mac when everybody else was into Rick Astley and so on. She cared about everything, except what people thought of her. I love that.’

‘Where is she now?’

You shrugged.

‘I don’t know. She … she moved away. She had her whole life ahead of her. Like you, she could achieve anything. I doubt she even remembers me!’

How could anyone forget you?
I wondered, and rolled back into the grass.

Back then not only could you feed pigeons in London; you could smoke pretty much anywhere, even inside, without being frowned on. Imagine that! I can’t actually believe now that I ever wasted time smoking outside, in parks and in the street. If I’d known what was coming I would’ve gone immediately into a café, a pub, onto a train, to light up, just because I
could
.

But you were frowning at me.

‘Why do you smoke?’

I thought about this for two long drags, looking at the white tails left by aeroplanes in the sky. Finally I replied, ‘Because nobody tells me not to.’

‘What if I told you not to?’

I looked at you.

‘But
you
smoke,’ I pointed out. ‘You smoke
loads
.’

‘That’s different. I’m …’

‘What? Old? A hypocrite?’

You ignored this.

‘And drugs?’

I groaned.

‘Jesus. Don’t give me the Just Say No talk, please.’

‘I know you aren’t going to like what I’m about to say, Little Miss Independent. I’m not sure I like it, to be honest. It’s just … sometimes I want to put you in my pocket and take care of you. There!’ You exhaled dramatically. ‘I’ve said it.’

I made a yakking sound into the grass, chanting, ‘Gross, gross, gross.’

But you were wrong; I did like it. I liked it a lot.

We went out, because nobody knew us in London. I looked older, dressed up, you looked younger, somehow.

We held hands, my nerves high in my throat.

I let you lead me, trusting you, all the time looking down. The pavements looked cleaner, in the dark, in the rain. Taxis edged past slower than we could walk, horns occasionally and for no apparent reason blaring. Coloured lights from the buildings above reflected and bounced in the puddles. I jumped on them, trying to capture them, splashing my shoes, making you laugh.

Nobody gave us a second glance, everyone pressing forward on their own personal missions, with fast feet, hard eyes.

I pressed my face against the window of a Chinese restaurant, eyeing row upon row of featherless ducks, hanged and burnt-looking, waiting to be eaten. I shuddered.

‘Do you want to go in?’ you said into my ear, brushing a raindrop from the end of my nose, and then you were ushering me into the steam and the warmth. We draped napkins big as bed sheets across our laps and I played with the chopsticks, making them dance like skinny bodiless legs across the table. I flicked through the menu with disinterest, let you order for me; eating was a necessary but temporary diversion from my real business, of talking to you, being close to you. Restaurants were just a place where we could sit still, sit opposite each other.

You wanted to know what was going on at home; what was the source of my most recent exasperation.

‘It’s like with our kid,’ I blushed, corrected myself, ‘I mean, my brother, our Alex. Alex,’ suddenly afraid I might sound common, but you hadn’t seemed to notice. ‘He comes and goes at all hours, there’s always some girl or other on the landing, queuing for the bathroom, wearing one of his skanky old T-shirts and no knickers. Ugh.’

I was exaggerating a bit – they usually were wearing knickers – but I liked the fact that you were amused.

‘My point is,’ I went on, ‘do they even notice? Well,
she
does, and you know what she says? “Better he does it under my roof than in an alley somewhere, or in the back of a car.”’

‘Well, she might have a point there. And he is a bit older than you, so …’

‘He’s seventeen,’ I grimaced, ‘and why does he have to
do it
anywhere? Ugh, ugh, ugh.’

‘Sounds to me as though you have very cool, liberal, dare I say it maybe even a little bit hippy-ish parents, and most of the kids in school would kill for a swap. But you, naturally, would rather they were hard-line puritans who sent you to bed at 7 p.m. with a gruel supper and no TV.’

‘First of all: they’re
not
hippies, they just don’t give a shit.’ I had never sworn in front of you before, I was pretty sure – I checked your face – no reaction. ‘Second of all:
please
don’t talk to me as though I’m some typical teenager with textbook, predictable reactions to everything.’

‘Would I dare?’ you smiled.

‘I’m telling you. I know everyone thinks their family is weird and says “oh, they don’t understand me”, but mine really is, and they really don’t.’

‘I know. I get it.’

I also wanted to say, of course, and you.
You. You’re the proof that I’m not the same as the others. The fact that you’re my ‘crush’, if we must call it that
(everyone seemed to). Not Mr Hill, the anaemic Biology teacher who looked barely out of school himself and had all the other girls in giggles every time he walked down the corridor. Laura was chief of his fan club; she raved about him. He left me cold.

You had something about you – it’s an overused phrase, one that we all nodded knowingly around and pretended to understand. But no one else really did; you had something about you and I wasn’t surprised that not everybody could see it.

Of course they couldn’t – it was for me. It was the Something that connected you to me; the light in your eyes, like a secret, waiting for me, whispering that you were mine.

In the hotel room, the bed loomed between us, too big, too well made. I tugged at the covers so tightly tucked under the mattress, and I pulled the very top one onto the floor. Sitting on it cross-legged, I reached up and dragged a pillow down too.

You raised an eyebrow.

‘What’s this?’

I shrugged.

‘I just don’t like the bed.’

You bounced on it, patted it as though encouraging a puppy.

‘It’s comfy,’ you said.

‘It’s too … big.’ It looked like the kind of bed that would expect something from me: a performance maybe, one I hadn’t had time to rehearse. It was a movie bed, a grown-up bed. I was happy on the floor. Slowly I peeled off my socks.

‘Then I’ll come to you,’ you smiled, but there was a touch of annoyance in your voice.

‘Whatever.’ I suddenly wanted water; the Chinese had been too salty, the wine too strong, the air-conditioning too dry.

Then you were kissing me, and there was no time for water, and anyway I liked it, I liked that part, always. I made the sound that I could never help making, ‘mmm,’ as though I was eating something good, and you smiled into the kiss because you thought you knew what
that
meant, and you fumbled with the button on my jeans.

I helped you. I got undressed quickly because in truth I just wanted it over with, I didn’t want the next part, not tonight. I just wanted a quick kiss and a cuddle and to go to sleep here on the floor. But I didn’t know how to tell you that, and anyway you mistook my speed at undressing for excitement, which made you smile even more. You didn’t even wait to get your own clothes off, you just unzipped your trousers and climbed onto me.

I made some more noises because I knew that would make you finish faster, but I stared at the skirting board the whole time, and once you were breathless and still I said, ‘You can go and sleep in the bed, I don’t mind.’ You did, leaving me on the floor.

I got up early and packed my bag while you slept so that we would be ready to leave, then made you a cup of tea and brought it to you. I stroked your hair and you woke up and murmured, ‘You’re an angel.’

That was my favourite part of the whole weekend.

When I came home from London, Mum was home too. She was sitting at the kitchen table drinking tea, like a visitor, so I went upstairs and looked in their bedroom. Sure enough, her clothes were hanging back in the wardrobe, her eyelash curlers and hair tongs were sitting on the dressing table.

‘So you’re back,’ I said later.

‘I never went away,’ she said simply. I looked at Dad; he nodded and looked down.
So this is how it’s going to be
, I thought.
We’re just going to pretend it never happened
.

The best way I could think of to close the weekend off was to lock myself in my loft room and get stoned, but I couldn’t get hold of Mari. In a way I didn’t want to see her; she knew me too closely. I wanted to be with someone I could pretend with.

Todd. He was clearly pleased to hear from me and appeared at the bottom of the stairs so quickly I thought he must have run round from his house.

He’d brought his little biscuit box.

‘Come to Mama,’ I smiled, feeling terribly grown up and cool. Todd’s eyes were shining.

I lay on the bed looking up at the sky while Todd rolled the first joint.

‘Are you sure your folks won’t mind?’ he asked nervously, looking at the door.

‘Advantage of living in the loft,’ I said, standing on the bed and reaching up to open the skylight. Cold air whooshed into the room, ‘and of course of having completely disinterested parents.’ Secretly, of course, I didn’t want either of them to come up the stairs. I didn’t know what their reaction would be; apart from anything else, unlike my brother I never had ‘friends’ of the opposite sex over.