Solitaire, Part 3 of 3 (2 page)

GRANDMA AND GRANDAD
have come round. The first time in months. We’re all at the dinner table and I’m trying not to catch anyone’s eye, but I keep seeing Mum glance concernedly towards Grandad and then glance concernedly towards Charlie. Dad’s sitting between Charlie and Oliver. I’m at the head of the table.

“Your mum’s told us you’ve got back into the rugby team, Charlie,” says Grandad. When he talks, he leans forward like we can’t hear him, even though he speaks twice as loud as everyone else. I think that this is very stereotypical of Grandad. “It’s a blessing they let you back in. You really messed them around, what with all that time off.”

“Yeah, it was really nice of them,” says Charlie. He’s holding his knife and fork in his hands by the side of his plate.

“It feels like we haven’t seen Charlie for years,” says Grandma, “doesn’t it, Richard? Next time we see you, you’ll probably have a wife and children.”

Charlie forces himself to laugh politely.

“Would you pass me the parmesan, Dad?” asks Mum.

Grandad passes the parmesan. “A rugby team always needs a skinny one like yourself. To do the running, you understand. If you’d have eaten more earlier on, you would have grown big enough to be one of the proper players, but I suppose it’s too late for that now. I blame your parents personally. More dark vegetables at an early age.”

“You haven’t told us about your Oxford trip, Dad,” says Mum.

I look at the plate. It’s lasagne. I haven’t eaten anything yet.

I discreetly retrieve my phone from my pocket and I have a message. I’d texted Lucas earlier.

(15:23)
Tori Spring

look I’m really really sorry

(18:53)
Lucas Ryan

It’s fine x

(19:06)
Tori Spring

quite clearly it’s not

(19:18) I’m so sorry

(19:22)
Lucas Ryan

It’s not even about that tbh x

(19:29)
Tori Spring

well why are you avoiding me then

Dad’s finished his dinner, but I’ve been taking it slow for Charlie.

“How are you getting along, Tori?” asks Grandma. “Enjoying sixth form?”

“Yes, yeah.” I smile at her. “It’s great.”

“They must treat you like adults now.”

“Oh, yes, yeah.”

(19:42)

you at least need to tell me why

“And your lessons are interesting?”

“Yes, very.”

“Thought much about university?”

I smile. “No, not really.”

Grandma nods.

“You should start thinking,” Grandad grumbles. “Important life decisions. One wrong move and you could end up in an office for the rest of your life. Like me.”

“How’s Becky?” asks Grandma. “She’s such a lovely girl. It would be nice if you could keep in touch when you leave.”

“She’s fine, yeah. She’s good.”

“Such beautiful long hair.”

(19:45)
Lucas Ryan

Can you meet me in town tonight? x

“How about you, Charlie? Have you been thinking about sixth form? Subjects-wise?”

“Erm, yeah, well, I’ll definitely do Classics, and probably English, but apart from that I’m not really sure. Maybe PE or something. Or psychology.”

“Where are you going to apply?”

“Higgs, I think.”

“Higgs?”

“Harvey Greene. Tori’s school.”

Grandma nods. “I see.”

“An all-girls’ school?” Grandad scoffs. “You won’t find any discipline there. A growing boy needs discipline.”

My fork makes a loud noise on my plate. Grandad’s eyes flicker towards me, and then back at Charlie.

“You’ve made some good strong friends at that school. Why are you leaving them?”

“I’ll see them outside of school.”

“Your friend, Nicholas, he’s at Truham sixth form currently, is he not?”

“Yeah.”

“So you don’t want to be with him?”

Charlie nearly chokes on his food. “It’s not that, I just think that Higgs is a better school.”

Grandad shakes his head. “Education. What’s that compared to friendship?”

I can’t take any more of this and I’m getting much too angry so I ask to be excused with a stomach ache. As I leave, I hear Grandad say:

“Girl’s got a weak stomach. Just like her brother.”

I arrive first. I sit at a table outside Café Rivière. We agreed to meet at 9pm, and it’s just gone ten to. The street is empty and the river quiet, but a faint echo of one of those indie bands – maybe Noah and the Whale or Fleet Foxes or Foals or The xx or someone like that, I can never tell the difference any more – is drifting out of an open window above my head. The music continues to play while I wait for Lucas.

I wait until 9pm. Then I wait until 9.15pm. Then I wait until 9.30pm.

At 10.07pm, my phone vibrates.

(22:07)
Lucas Ryan

Sorry x

I look at the message for a long time. At the single word without a full stop, at the tiny, meaningless x.

I place my phone on the table and look up at the sky. The sky always seems to be lighter when it’s snowing. I breathe out. A cloud of dragon breath sails above my head.

Then I stand up and start to walk home.

IN WEDNESDAY ASSEMBLY
, the sixth-formers spread themselves along five sectioned-off rows of the hall seating. You have to fill up all the gaps, otherwise not everyone will fit in the hall, so you don’t get to choose where you sit. This is how I end up accidentally sitting between Rita and Becky.

As people are filing into the seating rows, Ben Hope, back at school with a moderately bruised face, stares directly at me. He doesn’t seem angry or scared and he doesn’t even try to ignore me. He just looks sad. Like he’s about to cry. Probably because he’s not going to be popular any more. I haven’t seen Ben and Becky together yet, which is a sign that maybe Becky actually listened to my explosion. I think about Charlie. I wonder where Michael is. I wish Ben didn’t exist.

Kent’s taking the assembly. He’s talking about women. Most of our assemblies are about women.

“—but I’m going to tell you the absolute truth. You, as women, are at an automatic disadvantage in the world.”

Becky, on my right, keeps changing which side she crosses her legs. I make a conscious effort not to move.

“I don’t think … that many of you realise how fortunate you have been so far.”

I start counting Kent’s pauses under my breath. Becky doesn’t join me.

“Going to … the
best
… girls’ grammar school in the county … is an unbelievable privilege.”

I can see Lucas two rows in front of me. He managed to catch my eye as he was sitting down on the way in and I didn’t bother trying to look away. I just stared. I don’t even feel angry, really, about him standing me up last night. I don’t feel anything.

“I know that many of you … complain about the hard work, but until you’ve faced the real world, the world of work, you can’t understand the meaning … of hard work.”

Rita taps me suddenly on the knee. She holds out her hymn sheet. Underneath the lyrics to ‘Love Shine a Light’ she has written:

You’re isolating yourself!!!!!!

“You are going to face a phenomenal shock once you leave this school. This school, where
all
are treated as equals.”

I read it several times, then study Rita. She’s just someone I know. I’m not really friends with her.

“You are going to have to work harder than men … to get to where you want to be.
That
is the simple truth.”

She shrugs at me.

“Therefore I hope that, while you’re at this school, you’ll think about, and be appreciative of, what you’ve got. You are all very lucky. You have the potential to do anything you want to do and be anything you want to be.”

I fold up the hymn sheet into a paper plane, but I don’t fly it, because you can’t do that in assembly. Everyone stands and sings ‘Love Shine a Light’ and the lyrics nearly make me laugh out loud. On my way out, I drop the paper plane discreetly into Becky’s blazer pocket.

I don’t sit with anyone at lunch. I end up not having any lunch actually, but I don’t mind. I walk around the school. At many points during the day, I wonder where Michael could be, but at other times I’m fairly sure that I don’t care.

I haven’t seen Michael all week.

I have been thinking a lot about his skating. National Youth Semi-Finals.

I wonder why he didn’t tell me about it.

I wonder why he isn’t here.

I’m sitting against the tennis courts, surrounded by seagulls, which is odd, because they should have migrated by now. It’s Period 5. Music. I always skip Wednesday Period 5 because that is our performance practice lesson. I am watching as every girl in Year 7 makes her way out of the main school building and on to the field, some running, most laughing, and each with a collection of party poppers in her hands. I can’t see any teachers.

I don’t know what Solitaire has said to Year 7, but it is clear to me that this is their doing.

I take out my phone and load up Google. I type in ‘Michael Holden’, and then I type in the name of our town. Then I press Enter.

Like magic, my Michael Holden appears in the search results.

The first result is an article from our county newspaper, entitled ‘Local Teen Wins National Speed Skating Championship’. I click on it. It takes a while to load. My knees start to bob up and down in anticipation. Sometimes I hate the Internet.

The article is about three years old. There is an accompanying picture of fifteen-year-old Michael, but he doesn’t look so very different. Maybe his face is a little less defined. Maybe his hair is a little longer. Maybe he’s not quite so tall. In the picture, he is standing on a podium with a trophy and a bunch of flowers. He is smiling.

“
Local teen Michael Holden has skated to victory at this year’s National Under-16 Speed Skating Championships …

“
Holden’s previous victories include Regional Under-12 Champion, Regional Under-14 Champion and National Under-14 Champion …

“
The head of the UK’s Speed Skating authority, Mr John Lincoln, has spoken out in response to Holden’s undeniably extraordinary run of victories. Lincoln claimed, ‘We have found a future international competitor. Holden clearly displays the commitment, experience, drive and talent to bring the UK to victory in a sport which has never received satisfactory attention in this country
.’”

I head back to the search results page. There are many more articles of a similar nature. Michael won the Under-18 Championships last year.

I guess this is why he was angry when he came second in the semi-final. And fair enough. I think I would be angry, if I were him.

I sit there, staring at Google, for some time. I wonder whether I feel star-struck, but I don’t think that’s really it. It just seems momentarily impossible for Michael to have this spectacular life that I don’t know about. A life where he’s not simply running around with a smile on his face doing stuff that has no point.

It’s so easy to assume you know everything about a person.

I click off my phone and lean back against the wire fence.

The Year 7s have now congregated. A teacher runs out of school towards them, but she’s too late. The Year 7s shout a countdown from ten, and then they lift their party poppers into the air and let loose, and it sounds like I’ve wandered into a World War II battlefield. Soon everyone is screaming and jumping, the streamers spiralling through the air like some crazy rainbow hurricane. Other teachers begin to show, also screaming. I find myself smiling, and then I begin to laugh, and then instantly feel disappointed in myself. I shouldn’t be enjoying anything that Solitaire is doing, but also this is the first time in my life that I have ever felt a positive emotion towards Year 7.

I’M ON MY
way home on the bus when Michael finally decides to make his dramatic reappearance. I’m sitting in the second seat from the back on the left downstairs, listening to Elvis Costello like the goddamn hipster I am, when he spontaneously cycles up beside me on his mouldy old bike so that he is rolling down the road at the same speed as the bus. The window that I’m looking out of is all grimy and the snow has dried water droplets into it, but I can still see his smug face in profile, grinning in the wind like a dog hanging its head out of the car.

He turns, searching along the windows, eventually realising that I am in fact directly adjacent to him. Hair billowing, coat flapping behind him like a cape, he waves, freakishly, and then slaps his hand so hard on the window that every stupid kid on the bus stops throwing whatever they’re throwing and looks at me. I raise my own hand and wave, feeling quite ill.

He keeps this up until I get off the bus, ten minutes later, by which time it has started to snow again. I tell Nick and Charlie that they can go on without me. When we’re alone, we sit on a garden wall, Michael propping his bike up against it. I notice that he isn’t wearing school uniform.

I look to my left, up at his face. He’s not looking at me. I wait for him to start the conversation, but he doesn’t. I think he’s challenging me.

It’s taken longer than it should for me to recognise that I want to be around him.

“I’m—” I say, forcing the words out, “—sorry.”

He blinks as if confused, turns to me and smiles gently. “It’s okay,” he says.

I nod a little and look away.

“We’ve done this before, haven’t we?” he says.

“Done what?”

“The awkward apology thing.”

I think back to the ‘manically depressed psychopath’ comment. This isn’t the same though. That was me being stupid and his anger getting the better of him. That was just words.

I didn’t know Michael at all back then.