Precocious (9 page)

Anyway, the story. Jade’s story. It came back with 17/20 (a poor mark for me) and the comment, ‘Interesting, but it’s been done before; see me.’ I waited behind after class and you gave me
Lolita
. It had old, yellowed pages and a picture on the cover of a child wearing heart-shaped sunglasses, sucking a lollipop.

‘Oh alright, it’s a pretty good book,’ I admitted now. ‘Anyway, I’m almost too old to be a nymphet, so you’d better get a move on!’

‘I’m no Humbert,’ you protested, leaning forward.

‘Humbug,’ I laughed, and picked up the script.

Over lunch I invented a serious love interest for Scrooge.

‘You have to bring sex into everything,’ you complained, almost whispering the s-word, which made me smile.

‘I just don’t think it’s realistic to have this man who’s so completely cold and unfeeling.’

‘Why not?’ you said, draining the last of your wine. I wondered if you were planning to drive me home. ‘Look at me!’

‘Don’t try to pretend it isn’t important, because it is,’ I said in a low voice.

‘No it isn’t. You just ignore it, and it goes away. Not a problem at all.’ But you were watching my fingers on the stem of my wineglass.

‘The iceman cometh,’ I laughed.

I wished there was someone I could tell, later: ‘He gave me
wine
!’ It seemed like a big thing, not only because the only wine we ever had at home was Mateus Rosé, at Christmas. I was always allowed a drop with lemonade. This was real wine, and I wasn’t sure if I liked the taste or not, but I liked the fact that you were giving it to me. It told me you saw me as an equal.

You insisted on doing the dishes and told me there was more wine in the car. I took the keys, spotted the carrier bag on the back seat and as I clambered, from habit really, into the passenger seat, the glove box sprang open.

You’re so tidy, there was disappointingly little in there: the Honda’s manual and service history; a box of tissues; a couple of cassettes; a pen; a photograph. A photograph, face down. I pulled it out and turned it over.

A girl smiled up at me. She was wearing jeans and her knees were drawn up towards her chest. I recognised the diamond patterned rug she was sitting on. And I recognised the girl.

It wasn’t the former Mrs Morgan. It was Helen Platt. She was three years above me at school; she was at college or uni now. Some people said Oxford. I didn’t really like her; I suppose a lot of it was envy. She was pretty, in a fresh-faced sort of way. She was bright. She was talented, too; in her fourth year she had played Nancy in our school production of
Oliver!
I was a first year then, I’d been in the chorus, watching her, wishing I could sing like that, being hardly surprised by your appreciative coos and smiles and the way you squeezed her hand before she went on stage on the first night.

I looked at Helen before putting her back. She must have been about fourteen when the photograph was taken.

I went back into the house.

I may have been young, but I had experience – mostly thanks to Mari’s parties.

Mari’s mum was a nurse who worked nights. We rarely saw her, so we all sort of had the impression that it was Mari’s house and her mum just lodged there.

Sometimes when I called round after school she would be there, bleary-eyed, in a dressing gown, having her ‘breakfast’: a cup of tea and three cigarettes. On the odd occasion, she would boil a couple of eggs in a tiny saucepan and mush them up in a cup, with butter, as though for a baby, then eat them with a teaspoon, standing by the cooker.

Mari’s mum never seemed to inhabit any room other than the kitchen, which added to the impression of her not being a full-time resident. She always lit her cigarettes off the hob; I don’t know why she never bought a lighter, or how she never singed her eyelashes when she leaned over the flame. The whoosh of gas, the click of the ignition and the rhythmic knocking of eggs against the side of the saucepan: these were the sounds of Mari’s kitchen at tea/breakfast time.

When Mari’s mum went off to work and dusk arrived, things changed in the house. As with the outside, the world got darker.

I was thirteen when I had my first drink at one of Mari’s gatherings. Vodka and orange in a pint glass, followed by a bottle of brown ale. I was sick in a wastepaper basket, but I was back the following weekend, and almost every weekend after.

The crowd didn’t vary much. A procession of long-haired boys in black trench coats and Doc Marten boots. A trio of girls whose friendship with Mari made me feel possessive: they all wore thick eyeliner and their hair was backcombed; Gina’s was dyed an unnatural shade of black that was almost blue. She rarely spoke and never smiled; Mari said she had had a tough childhood and took years to trust anyone. The girls just seemed impossibly glamorous and knowing; I preferred the boys.

My favourite was Todd, who always carried a little plastic biscuit box: it was full of weed, he called it draw; sometimes magic mushrooms. He had soulful eyes and smelled of autumn.

We would sit on cushions on the floor instead of on the furniture. We talked: about music, about religion. ‘Do you believe in God?’ and ‘What do you think happens when you die?’ were favourite conversation openers. We talked about what we would be when we ‘grew up’, although I was the youngest so most of them already seemed adult to me. We made wild plans: we could foresee no barriers to running off to live in New York, Marrakech or (my personal favourite) Paris.

I thought I was going to be a bohemian poet, drinking coffee all day and roaming the streets with wild hair and scuffed shoes, notebook in hand. Everything in my existence would be tawdry but beautiful, and I would live in a tiny flat on the Left Bank filled with battered antique furniture and dusty books. I would have a pair of lovebirds in a silver cage.

We mostly drank the hours away, but sometimes tiny tabs of paper decorated with strawberries or stars would get passed around, and those who took them would spend hours marvelling at the patterns on the wallpaper or the veins on their own hand. This bored me; I was more interested in drink, or smoking weed. I liked the gradual warm feeling, and the rolling laughter that felt as though it lasted for hours.

I didn’t actually know much about the kids in the group, apart from Mari, and yet there was a strange intimacy between us; the kind you only get in a dark smoky room where everyone is inventing themselves.

Inevitably, there was drunken fumbling. It would start with Truth or Dare, or Spin the Bottle, then we would pair off and I would be led into a dark corner, or sometimes into a bedroom. It just seemed like something you did, with your friends, after a night of drinking and talking and getting stoned. If it went on too long, I would get bored – with their wet kisses, with the mechanical rhythm of fingers and palms – but I would always do it, because for the first few moments, those very first seconds of touching each other in the dark, I felt like someone who mattered.

So because of the parties, I knew what to do – up to a point – with boys. I wondered, was it the same with men?

I stood in your bathroom, looking at myself in the mirror. I knew things from books, as well: about body language, for example. I knew that women wore lipstick to make their lips mimic what other parts of their body might look like when sexually excited, and that this was why men found it attractive. I knew that if someone pointed their feet towards you, or played with their hair (usually women) or put their thumbs in their belt loops (men – to accentuate the groin area, apparently), or if their pupils got bigger when they looked at you – all of these things meant they liked you.

When I went back into the living room, you were leaning over the sheets of paper we had scribbled all over. I felt a strange thrill seeing my handwriting next to yours. Mine was small, neat; yours looping, artistic. Our words seemed to be dancing together on the page.

Taking a slug of wine, I told myself:
it’s now or never
. I sat next to you and used my most practised move: I put my hand onto that dangerous point in your lap that is between thigh and groin. There is only a fraction of possible ambiguity in this touch, and a movement of my fingers of less than an inch would remove any ambiguity altogether.

You looked at me, raised a quizzical eyebrow, and in that instant I crushed my lips onto yours.

It all happened quickly. You shifted, my hand brushed your fly, then was stopped, my wrist caught in your grasp. Your other hand held my chin, gently pushing me away. Something flashed in your eyes. For a second I thought you looked angry.

‘What are you doing?’ It was a demand; your voice hoarse.

‘I … I thought …’ I was suddenly terrified. I recoiled from your grip and you released me. I wanted to curl in on myself, disappear. I scuttled like a crab to the opposite end of the sofa.

‘Fee,’ you said softly, ‘look at me.’

Somehow I found the strength to lift my head.

‘I like you.’ You reached out as though to take my hand again, then apparently thought better of it. Clearing your throat, you said decisively, as though on stage, as though in school assembly, ‘I like you, but I can’t like you like
that
. Do you understand?’

‘Why can’t you?’ I heard my whining voice as though it was coming from someone else.

‘You know why. We’ll have to just be friends.’ You paused, searched my face with your eyes. ‘A hug?’

I wanted to stay stubbornly at my end of the sofa, but I wanted the contact more. I sank into your chest, circled your waist with my arms. I rubbed the small of your back with my fingers and pressed myself hard against you, trying to feel a response from you, a movement, anything.

Gently, you unpeeled me, planted a chaste kiss on my forehead.

‘Come on, kid – let’s get you home.’

On Monday morning I closed and locked the bathroom door against the bustle of the house.

I dressed slowly. A button left undone, then another. Black tights instead of socks, today. Skirt rolled up, sleeves rolled up. As little of me covered by uniform as possible.

I stared at myself in the mirror. Looked at my dimples, my snub nose, my stupid wispy eyebrows, all the features that made me look young, pale, insignificant. Took out my make-up bag and plunged my fingers into the pot of foundation. Honey beige.

I smothered and smeared until you couldn’t see my pores anymore, until my face was a seamless mask. Smoothed on layer after layer, carefully, raising my chin, observing the line on my neck and blending it downwards like they said in the magazines. My finger nudged the collar of my school shirt, leaving a rusty streak, but no matter, I was covered. I took out a brush and dusted myself with powder, setting the layers I had made beneath golden dust.

I pulled out a black eyeliner and got to work lining and circling my eyes, the way I’d seen Mari do hers. Made my lashes heavy with coat after coat of mascara. Little clumps fell onto my cheekbones like tiny spiders and I picked them off carefully with tongue-moistened fingertips. Blinked. One more coat. Just at that moment,

Bang, bang, bang
.

Sudden impatient thumping at the bathroom door and I nearly poked myself in the eye with the mascara wand.

‘WHAT?’ I yelled.

‘Come on,
loser
,’ Alex droned.

‘Get lost, pig,’ I shouted. ‘Mum! Tell him!’

I heard muffled voices and then a lighter knock and my dad’s gentle tone. ‘You
have
been in there nearly half an hour, Girl. We all need to get ready.’

‘Fine! Whatever.’ I swung open the door and left the room with a scowl at the triumphant Alex.

‘What have you got on your face?’ My mother was nibbling her toast, leaving the edges, blowing on her fingernails which were still wet, maroon-coloured.

‘Make-up?’

‘Oh, very droll.’ She stood up and poured the remains of her coffee down the sink. ‘Now, do you want a lift to school, or what?’

‘
What
. I’ll walk.’

‘I’m taking Alex to college.’

‘So? I’m walking. I don’t want to get in the car with that
pig
, anyway.’

‘Please yourself.’ She swung her jacket around her shoulders. ‘But wash your bloody face.’

‘Fiona, could you stay behind please?’

I gave a brief nod and sat rooted behind my desk while the other kids stirred up a whirlwind of coats and bags and scarves, rushing from the room as though in a race to make the door before the bell’s wail expired. I heard somebody mutter, ‘Oh dear, looks like the teacher’s pet’s in
trouble
,’ someone else snigger and Laura call, ‘Talk to you later, Fee,’ but I just stared straight ahead.

Once they’d all gone you closed the door quietly, sat down beside me, and said, ‘I think I might have given you the wrong impression.’

I felt as though the heat from my face might melt my make-up. I was suddenly conscious of it caked over my pores, gathering in a greasy orange crease at my hairline, dry and flaky around my nostrils and lips.

You went on without looking at me, ‘I hoped we could be friends …’

‘We can, we can!’

‘… and if I’ve given you the idea we could be anything else, I could get into a lot of trouble.’

‘But it wasn’t your fault,’ I cried. ‘It was me. I’m sorry.’

‘No, I was responsible, Fiona. I’m the …’

‘Don’t say it!’ I shouted. ‘Don’t say you’re the adult! Don’t you dare!’ I jumped up, pushed the desk away from me and ran from the room without looking back, hot tears forging cracks down the contours of my painted mask.

I held the receiver for a long time before I dialled your number.

‘Hello?’

‘I know you’ll say I shouldn’t have called …’

‘No, it’s okay.’

‘It’s just, I felt like we couldn’t really talk, before. Not properly. At school.’

‘Well, maybe we should stick to school.’

‘I need to ask you something.’

‘Go ahead.’

‘What do you …’ I took a deep breath. ‘What do you think of me?’

‘Wow. It’s very brave of you to ask that.’

‘Is it?’

‘Of course. That’s all anyone ever really wants to know from anyone else, isn’t it?’