The Kiss (2 page)

T
he Gaslight Theatre is right in the middle of town, near the river. It’s a classic concrete monster from the seventies, rows of tall thin windows on it like the open mouth of a basking shark feeding on plankton. Mum and Dad took me to a pantomime there when I was six, and for months afterwards I thought it was a place where magic came through the plugs instead of electricity. I gazed on it in rapture every Saturday morning when we went shopping, remembering King Rat creeping through the auditorium with his long tail dragging behind him. Most of the other kids screamed with terror, but not me. King Rat was the bad guy, and bad guys never got away with it. You just had to wait for the end. What was there to be scared of? Then Mum left. I understood better about King Rat then.

Tonight the Gaslight has green lighting all up the front: strips of Kryptonite beckoning Superman into the bad guy’s lair. Tabby and I stand on the steps, shivering in the evening air, listening to the roar of people inside and working up the courage to go in. We’re already a couple of drinks to the good, but a couple more are needed.

‘How do I look?’ Tabby asks.

‘Sensational,’ I say.

The petrol-green fabric on Tabby’s dress really suits her colouring. I have persuaded her to ditch the glasses in favour of contacts tonight, even though she hates wearing them, and we’ve spent ages on her eye make-up. She resembles a beautiful dragonfly, all legs and shimmer.

‘You look hot too,’ Tabby says, checking me over.

I sort out the gussety bit of my cherry-red playsuit and fluff my hair a bit. ‘Sure I’m not too curly?’ I check.

‘I’d kill for your curls.’

That’s what everyone without curls says. They have no idea.

‘Guess what?’ I say. ‘I’m saving up for—’

‘Don’t say straighteners,’ Tabby interrupts, looking worried.

Give a girl a chance. ‘I was
going
to say, for a haircut. I thought I might go really short, like you. A whole new look. Leave the past behind.’

I have pictured it many times in the past months. Goodbye, dumb curly walk-all-over-me kid. Hello super sophisticated French-boy-kisser-among-dunes vamp. The hair’s as good a place to start as any.

Tabby looks horrified. She grabs a fistful of my hair and shakes it at me like an angry, very curly horse’s tail. ‘Cut this? Don’t you know how lucky you are? Mine only grows to my neck, and then it just hangs there, splitting at the ends and getting snarled in the zips of my cardies.’

Tab has a definite way with words. She almost makes me change my mind. I decide to leave the decision another week.

‘Does Sam know you’re out with me tonight?’ I ask.

‘He wanted to go out, but I told him we were having a girls’ night,’ Tabby confesses. ‘How I hadn’t seen you in ages and how he’d feel left out of all our conversation and how it was better if we saw each other tomorrow instead. I feel bad about it, to be honest.’

‘You
haven’t
seen me for ages, apart from yesterday, and we are girls out for the night, which makes it a “girls’ night”,’ I point out. ‘Don’t lose the buzz.’

I take twenty quid from the cash machine at the foot of the Gaslight steps, then grab her hand to drag her in with me. As I haul her towards the doors, Tab suddenly gives me a nudge.

‘Check out those two,’ she whispers.

Two guys are standing in a street-lit patch not far from us. One is tall and well-built, with a fitted black T-shirt and a mess of dark hair. The other is whippet-thin, his white trainers gleaming brightly in the green light flooding through the glass doors of the theatre.

‘Let’s go in,’ I say abruptly. And I shove Tabby hard between the shoulders, into the thumping warmth of the theatre bar.

I happily admit to being a party girl. I’ve danced on tables before, and once puked in a flowerbed. But I suddenly find that I’m as shy as a new-born lamb. I don’t recognize a single face. I am frozen to the doormat and more than a little freaked out.

‘Sure this is the right party?’ Tab whispers in my ear.

I spot a group of familiar faces huddled by the loos, all looking as shell-shocked as I feel. I unglue my mouth. ‘It is,’ I manage. ‘We’re college girls now. This is where we belong.’

Tabs looks happier. Excited, even. I wish the same could be said of me, but seeing Studs outside has thrown me like a discus at the Olympics. I have to pull myself together.

We gaze around the room in bemusement, standing close together for courage. Brightly coloured
Welcome
banners are slung up over the bar. The girls are all wearing practically nothing and the guys look like they’ve found the mother lode. Half the room is already wrecked.

This seems like a very, very good idea.

I consider fighting my way to the bar, but a sea of drunk people are in the way. I put some money in the vending machine by the door instead. Two cans of soda roll out with a familiar clank. Open, drink a third, top up with a mini-bottle of vodka nicked from Dad’s drinks cupboard which has, in turn, been nicked from a hotel mini-bar.

‘Get this down you,’ I advise, handing Tabby her doctored soda and taking a slug of my own.

Tabby knocks back her drink in one, producing a burp somewhere on the Richter scale of burpiness. ‘Wow, sorry,’ she says, wiping her mouth. ‘Do you think anyone heard? Let’s dance.’

Guys are checking her out already. I feel a brief flash of conscience about the Onion. Then again, we’re sixteen. No one’s faithful at sixteen, apart from me, and
that
is a mistake I’ll never make again.

‘Did you know those guys on the steps?’ Tabby shouts through the music as we throw ourselves around the dancefloor. I am still feeling weird, but the evening is improving with every thud from the speakers. ‘You acted like you maybe did. The tall one was cute. Did you see his shoulders?’

I don’t answer her question. Jonny Osgood has just loomed on the dancing horizon like an overweight lighthouse in a stormy sea. He’s even wearing stripes to complete the illusion. I’m ridiculously pleased to see him.

‘OZ!’ I roar, waving like a madwoman.

Oz forces his way through the crowd to join us, holding a beer bottle aloft. His button-black eyes are gleaming with good humour, his hair gelled into a kind of pyramid. He already seems to know half the people in the room, to judge from the head-nods and high-fives going on. As he gets closer, he waggles his tongue at us like a thirsty dog.

‘Fancy a kiss, ladies?’

‘You’re such a lech,’ I say, cheerfully shoving him in the chest. ‘Keep your tongue to yourself and get us more drinks.’

‘Eighteen already and college hasn’t even started,’ Oz says happily. ‘It was worth redoing last year for this very pleasure.’

‘You quoting your dad now?’ I inquire. ‘I’m guessing not.’

‘A blip,’ he says, waving all mention of flunked GCSEs to one side. ‘Nothing more. Whoops, none left,’ he adds, frowning at his bottle. ‘Another, I think. What are you two drinking?’

‘You could do worse than get with Oz tonight, Tab,’ I observe as Oz heads to the bar. ‘He may need to lose a little weight, but he’s been into you since last summer and has the attention span of a gnat. He wouldn’t give you any trouble.’

Tab looks appalled. ‘Oz? No way. That would be like getting with my
dog
.’

The music goes up a notch. Ultraviolet lights come on, and everyone wearing white starts to glow in bright, uneven patches. Tabby’s eyes skim off the top of the dancing crowd and come to rest on a dark head standing some way above everyone else.

‘Hey!’ she says with excitement. ‘The big-shouldered one from outside is behind the bar!’

‘If his friends are anything to go by, he’s probably robbing it,’ I mutter.

Tabby jabs me a little unsteadily in the chest. ‘You
do
know him! Who is he? Can I meet him?’

I glance around the room at floor level. Studs’ white trainers will be glowing like lightbulbs in here. I think I glimpse him on the far side of the dancefloor. ‘Far side’ is good, though ‘Australia’ would be better.

‘I don’t know him, but I know his friend,’ I say. ‘Avoid.’

‘You can’t bring me out and tell me I’m going to kiss someone but I don’t get to choose who,’ says Tabby with a grumpy hiccup. ‘I’m going to give Oz a hand with the drinks and check out Shoulders for myself.’

I sit for a while, waiting for Tabs and Oz and watching the crowd, smiling flirtatiously at any half-decent guys looking my way and feeling more like myself. This isn’t so strange. It’s just bigger. As a kicking tune crashes in, I leap to my feet and dance on a wave of affection for all the faces that I know and several that I don’t. It’s good to be back.

‘Well now, Delilah.’

My good mood evaporates like steam off a cowpat.

‘What are you doing here?’ I say warily.

‘Business, babe. It’s a well known fact that college kids like to partay.’ Studs pushes his cap back on his head and looks me over. I feel his eyes, hot and wet, like a pair of little tongues licking my skin. The diamond studs in his nose wink in the flashing lights, on and off, on and off. He whistles. ‘You’re looking hot tonight. Dave’s a fool.’

I lick my lips, which are suddenly dry. ‘Dave who?’

‘I always liked you, Delilah.’

‘It’s not mutual,’ I snap.

As he melts away into the crowd, I half expect a flash of sulphur-smelling smoke. This is the Gaslight after all, home of magic and illusion.

‘Wanna dance?’

The smiling guy who’s approached me is OK-looking, but all my energy has drained away like dishwater. Flirting is suddenly beyond me.

‘Sorry,’ I mutter. ‘No thanks.’

I grab my bag off the table and walk as quickly as I can across the pulsing dancefloor. I have to find Tabby. We have to leave. Right now.

I stop in dismay.

My best friend is lolling over the bar, her fist wrapped firmly in the neck of the big-shouldered barman’s T-shirt as she kisses him across the beermats among cheering onlookers. Standing beside her, Oz is holding three bottles of cider and looking fed up.

But not nearly as fed up as the guy in the Gaslight’s double doors, frozen and gaping and as unlike an onion as it’s possible for a human to be.

Talk to me babe. I miss u xx

‘
Send
, will you?’ I snarl, pressing buttons. The message sits there, looking at me like a particularly stupid dog that’s been instructed to fetch a stick but would rather stay where it is and lick its butt. I whack the send button hard one more time and it disappears. It’s a pig, being back on my old phone. Everything is clunky and dates from a hundred years ago. There’s an app for sending smoke signals somewhere on it, I swear.

My whole life is a pig just now, to tell the truth. I haven’t seen Tabby all week, despite calling at her place four times, both before and after college. She’s avoiding me. I can’t blame her. Sam dumped her in spectacular fashion, and her devastation is all my fault.

College isn’t supposed to start this way. I’ve been so preoccupied with the Tabby thing that my first few days have passed in a blur of grovelling voice messages and texts which – when my phone bothers to send them – haven’t had any response at all. I have to get a grip. This year is
important
. I can’t afford to lose the plot in Week One.

Tabs does all different subjects to me – Classics, English, Ancient History and Music. College is huge, and my bit is miles away from the Arts Department. I have been lurking as much as I can in the canteen, but even at lunch the two sides never seem to meet, as if they function in parallel universes. At this rate, I’ll never see my best friend again.

‘Hi Delilah. I’m thinking of running away to the circus. I reckon I’d be good on the trapeze.’

Oz is in front of me with his canteen tray.

‘It was our first Economics class,’ I sigh, dropping my phone on the table with irritation. ‘Only Einstein would have understood it.’

‘Einstein . . .’ Oz sets his tray down and then clicks his fingers. ‘The dog from
Back to the Future
. Classic! Am I right or am I right? Thanks for the text. I’m here and I’ve missed you too. Let’s talk.’

‘What?’

‘Your message.’ Oz looks expectant. ‘You just sent it. About five seconds ago.’

I groan and slap myself round the head. ‘I was trying to send that to Tabby. Stupid,
stupid
phone.’

Oz unwraps a sandwich the size of my head and takes a bite. ‘What are you missing Tabby for? You guys are joined at the hip.’

‘We had radical separation surgery,’ I say.

‘Is this about the party at the Gaslight?’ he asks in a surprising flash of intuition. ‘That whole ugly scene on the steps when Tab got canned? It was nasty. But may I remind you that you’re not the one who got with the barman?’

I rest my forehead in my hands. ‘I may not have done it, but I talked her into it. Well, not the bar guy – I suggested you, actually – but if I hadn’t practically ordered her to slum it she’d still be with Sam and taking my calls.’

Oz brightens. ‘You suggested me? What did she say?’

‘That’s not the point. The point is that I made my best friend lie to a guy who made her happy and is now making her extremely unhappy. What kind of friend am I?’

‘A bad one.’

‘Tell it to me straight, why don’t you.’

‘You asked,’ he points out.

‘Oz, what actually
happened
that night?’ I ask in some desperation. ‘I only saw the end. Give me details. I need facts to get myself out of this mess.’

Oz obliges. ‘I was getting in the drinks when Tabby swung up. She was quite pissed and started chatting to the bar guy.’

It never takes much to get Tab drunk. She once slid down some banisters after one glass of punch, catching her dress on a splinter halfway down and ending up at the bottom like a blown-out umbrella. Come to think of it, it was the same party where I puked in the flowerbed. Maybe there was more than cider in the punch.

‘We were flirting and it was going well,’ Oz continues. ‘Then I realized her efforts were all aimed at the bar guy, not me. The kissing part happened when I wanted to get some crisps. Tabby ups her game with the bar guy about getting some for free. He makes some idiot comment about them costing her a kiss, so she grabs him. You know the rest.’ He frowns. ‘We never even got the crisps.’

I’m not surprised the bar guy lies at the heart of this. He’s mates with Studs, isn’t he?

My phone rings. I leap on it like a kid on a lilo.

‘Tab!’ I cry, almost sobbing with relief. ‘Oh Tabby, I’m so, so sorry about Sunday night! Are you OK?’

Tabby sounds cool. ‘Not really.’

I’m gabbling but I can’t help it. ‘I’m with Oz. He told me what happened. It’s not your fault, hon. The bar guy started it.’

‘We shouldn’t have gone to the party without Sam.’

‘I know. It’s totally my fault,’ I say humbly. ‘All of it. I swear to you that if I could change Sunday night, I would.’

Tabby’s voice softens. ‘I’ve got a brain, and I make my own choices. I
was
angry with you, but I have to face facts. You weren’t the one doing the kissing.’

‘That’s what I said,’ Oz puts in, listening shamelessly.

‘Shut up, Oz,’ Tabby and I say together.

Oz stands up. ‘My work here is done.’

‘What can I do to put things right?’ I beg down the phone when he’s gone. ‘I’ll do anything to make you feel better.’

Tabby starts to cry. ‘I don’t know. It’s so awful. When he saw me . . . I’ll never forget his face as long as I live. He won’t speak to me. We sit in the same classes and he looks through me like I’m not there.’

I’m on the verge of crying myself. ‘That means he still likes you.’

‘How do you figure that?’

‘If he wasn’t that bothered, he’d be talking to you by now.’

Tabby is silent on the other end. I can feel her hope snaking down the phone into my ear.

‘I’m going to sort this out,’ I promise. ‘Do you want me to call him?’

‘He won’t believe you. You’re my friend, which doesn’t exactly make you objective.’

I am determined not to let this opportunity to make amends pass me by. I’ve done plenty of things in my life that make me break into a sweat of misery. Tabby is not going to be one of them. She’s not getting away.

‘Well, how’s this?’ I say. ‘I’ll go to the Gaslight this weekend to talk to the bar guy myself. I’ll give him Sam’s number and persuade him to call and explain what happened. You were
drunk
. Are you telling me Sam’s never got drunk?’

‘He doesn’t drink,’ says Tabby.

‘Well he should,’ I say crossly. ‘Then maybe he wouldn’t be so quick to judge others. Are you free after college? I want to take you out and buy you something nice to say sorry. I saved up some money from the lido to get me through college this term and the least I can do is spend some of it on you. Can we do that?’

‘That would be nice,’ says Tabby gratefully. ‘I love you, Lilah. Let’s not fight ever again.’

I can tell you now, sobbing in the college canteen is up there on my list of Uncool Things I Have Done. But it’s worth it.

‘OK,’ I say, disentangling myself from Tabby’s arms in the college car park, where we’ve been hugging for approximately five years. ‘Let’s do this shopping thing. There’s a fabby vintage shop by the Gaslight. I’ll take you there.’

‘Actually,’ says Tabby, ‘can we go to M&S?’

‘M&S?’ I reply in shock. ‘What are you, seventy-five?’

‘Is this my treat or what?’ Tabby reminds me. ‘I would quite like some new undies, actually. Mum says M&S do the best knickers in the business.’

‘You are so uncool,’ I grumble. ‘You’ll be telling me about their three-for-two deals on socks next.’

Marks and Spencer’s is only a couple of doors away from college. I don’t think I’ve been inside since Mum left. Dad’s not much of an undies shopper. Tesco’s with the odd market pair thrown in is more our style. Still grumbling, I usher Tabby through the big glass doors.

Pants are on the first floor.

‘Exactly how many bums are there in this town?’ I say, reeling from the banks of underwear stretching away from us in every shade from white to shocking pink.

It’s so nice to hear Tabby giggling again. She chooses a set of pants and a bra in blue and white polka dots and thrusts them at me.

‘Are you sure about this?’ she says suddenly, pulling them back again as I reach for them. ‘They’re twenty quid.’

‘I saved four hundred pounds this summer, even after France,’ I say with pride. ‘Twenty quid is a drop in my vast cash ocean, and it’s worth every penny to see you smiling. Hand them over.’

The till lady rings them through. I take out my card and flourish it at her, proud that at last I have a bank account. The card is still quite shiny and new, and I’ve personalized it with a picture of myself looking about as straight-haired as I ever get.

‘Sorry love,’ says the till lady, handing it back. ‘It’s not going through the machine. Have you got anything else?’

With only two pounds in cash on me, the undies are returned. We head for the food department instead.

‘That was embarrassing,’ I say as we leave with our purchase. ‘I’m really sorry. I’ve probably set something up wrong with the bank. I’ll talk to them about it tomorrow.’

‘Don’t worry,’ says Tab. ‘I love Percy Pigs.’

‘Stick with me and I’ll treat you to pig-shaped chews forever, babe,’ I sigh. ‘I know how to impress a lady.’

The Percy Pigs are gone before we’ve made it halfway down the High Street. The Gaslight glimmers at us, a hundred metres further on. It’s cloaked in pink lights today, and is already shining in the grey September afternoon.

‘We’re going in there,’ I say, high on Percy Pigs and sudden resolve. ‘We’re going to sort this out with the bar guy right now.’

Tabby looks pale. She stares at the Gaslight. ‘I don’t think I can face him,’ she says in a small voice. ‘And I’ve got an essay due on
The Odyssey
. I think I’m going to – you know. Head home.’

I pat her on the arm. ‘I’ll deal with it by myself. Give me Sam’s number so I can hand it over.’

Tabby messages me the number. Her eyes look a bit watery at Sam’s smiling photo on her phone.

‘Shoulders may not work there at five-thirty on a Thursday afternoon!’ she shouts after me as I stride towards the theatre.

‘We’ve got to start somewhere!’ I shout back. ‘I’ll call you later!’

And I walk up the theatre steps into something completely unexpected.