Turning Thirty (15 page)

I thought I was going to die.

I really did.

Later, in the bar at the gym, as we all sat around drinking manly pints of orange juice, because it was too early for a beer, everyone congratulated me on my performance. And they weren't being sarcastic. In the car, driving back to King's Heath, Gershwin and I talked of nothing but football. We dissected the game, talked strategy and even suggested that it might be a good idea to have mid-week training sessions. It was all talk, of course, but comforting all the same.

‘Do you fancy coming to ours for Sunday dinner?' asked Gershwin.

‘What are you having?' I asked.

‘Normally it would be something exotic like toast so that we could spend the rest of the day on the sofa but Zoë's mum and dad are coming down from Doncaster so we're having the works – chicken, veg, roast spuds, the lot. As I don't much get on with them your company would be appreciated. Are you in?'

‘I'd love to, mate, but I promised to make an appearance at the Beckford family dinner table today.'

‘They won't mind you missing one Sunday dinner surely? You live there.'

‘Yeah, they will,' I replied. ‘My mum's got a good memory for these things. Since your birthday and the-staying-out-all-nightwithout-telling-them episode I've had to walk on eggshells – especially with my mum. Skipping a Sunday dinner would set me back several trips to the supermarket.'

‘Fair enough.' He sighed. ‘It was a good night, though.'

‘Your birthday?'

‘Yeah. And the next day up that hill. When I went into work the day after that I had to keep faking a bit of a cough as though I was struggling with pneumonia but had dragged my sorry arse into work because I'm such a martyr. I was brilliant. Utterly convincing. My boss even asked if I was sure I didn't want to go home.'

‘Did you?'

‘Nah,' said Gershwin despondently. ‘The work was piled up high enough as it was without me making things worse.' He stopped as we pulled up outside my parents' house. ‘Have you thought any more about Ginny?'

‘A bit, I suppose,' I admitted casually. ‘I know you'd like to think I was going to get all obsessed with her . . .'

Gershwin laughed. ‘So you're not?'

‘Far from it, mate. She and lan seem right loved-up. I doubt very much that she'd want to give it all up for me.' I paused, thinking. ‘Still, it was nice to know that we could be friends now that the curse is finally broken.'

‘Zoë seemed to think that there was definite electricity between the two of you. I couldn't see it myself but she tends to be quite good on such things.'

I tried not to look pleased but I probably failed. ‘Nah,' I said casually. ‘It wasn't electricity, it was nostalgia. The two are easy to confuse.'

‘If you say so,' said Gershwin, still smirking.

‘I've been thinking, though . . .' I continued, ‘ . . . about us, you know, you, me and Ginny. I think my brain's gearing up for my birthday. I get the feeling that I'm going to be one of the where-am-I-going-how-did-I-get-here? turning-thirty types. It's a bit crap that, especially as I was hoping to do the whole thing gracefully. Instead it looks as though I'm going to abandon all dignity and go kicking and screaming all the way. I'm rambling. And I'm pretty sure I'm not making any sense, but seeing you and Ginny – people I've known for years – has kind of helped me put things into some kind of context.'

‘I know what you're saying,' said Gershwin. ‘It's been good having you back, here, even if you're only back for a bit. It's easy to forget how good the old times were. It's nice to revel in the past every now and again.'

‘Exactly,' I said, reaching my point. ‘That's why I'm thinking about getting in touch with the others – Katrina, Elliot, Bev and Pete. It's just an idea I had. I'd like to see them all just once, you know, to see if they're still the same people. I've got time on my hands until I move to Sydney and I haven't really got anything better to do. What do you think?'

‘I don't know about that,' said Gershwin. ‘I mean, you've been lucky with Ginny and me because, well, we're quality stock,' he said. ‘Not that the rest of them aren't, but you know what I mean. People change. People can disappoint you. It's easy to do. Take this, for example. Last summer Zoë and I went to the wedding of one of her friends from university. Zoë's old best friend, Michelle, was there too. They'd been really close at university but had lost touch after graduating – you know how it is, it happens on both sides. When Zoë knew her, this girl was a bit of a flaky hippie chick type, but in the three years since they'd met she'd changed into this horrible bitch-monster with a French boyfriend, a flash car and a bad attitude. She blanked Zoë. Didn't even look at her. We got our revenge, though,'he said, smiling slyly. ‘She was staying at the hotel where the wedding reception was held, so we found out her room number, pretended it was our room and asked for an alarm call at five-minute intervals from five o'clock onwards because we were such heavy sleepers.'

‘The moral being that the things you might've had in common back then might not be enough any more?'

‘Exactly,' said Gershwin. ‘It's sad, but true. I'm not saying don't do it because I could be wrong. All I'm saying is, don't be surprised.'

‘Well,' I said, after a few moments, ‘it's just a theory, surely. And, like all theories, the only way to find out for sure is to go and see for yourself.'

Dear Matt

Take my advice: do not do this. All that'll happen is that you'll spoil what few great memories you have of these people. You've been lucky with Ginny and Gershwin, but I'd hate to think how you'd react if the people you get in touch with all had changed into the world's biggest assholes. Remember that weekend when I met up with a bunch of girlfriends from my old high school in Brooklyn? How much of a nightmare was that? I hated every single one of them! My old best friend Lucy Buchanan had smoked so much dope in college I couldn't even get her to construct a meaningful sentence; Sheena Deaver couldn't see what was wrong with dating a semi-Nazi old enough to be her father; Stephanie Dolfini couldn't talk about anything apart from her hugely rich paediatrician fiancé; and even poor Yona ‘Top of the Class' Hughes was never the same after she had to drop out of Stamford because she'd burned herself out in high school (although that wasn't her fault). My advice – stay clear. The thing about rummaging about in the past is that you never know what you might find.

love

Elaine xxx

PS But at the end of the day you've got to do what you've got to do!

Back when I was a teenager every school had its Bev Turner: the girl who, on reaching her fifteenth birthday, dyed her hair black, stopped going out in the sun and started wearing dodgy Gothmakeup. Call her a Goth and she'd get really annoyed and swear blind that she wasn't. Point out that she looked like Ally Sheedy in
The Breakfast Club
and she'd probably tell you to get stuffed but would be secretly pleased. But then ask her why, if she wasn't a Goth, she insisted on looking like a Goth, listening to woefully crap Goth music and never going out in the sun, and she'd probably threaten violence. On top of the Goth/not Goth thing, my Bev Turner had the added dysfunction of having parents that seemed to be permanently in the middle of a long divorce.

I loved Bev. I really did. I found her fascinating. Just thinking about her in those days made me laugh because, for as long as I knew her, she was the patron saint of gloom, doom and bad news. She always wore a sardonic smile, listened to the most depressing music on earth and had a thing for celebrities who had died young. Sylvia Plath, of course, was her favourite, followed by James Dean, and lan Curtis of Joy Division. That sort of teen brooding was incredibly attractive and I always suspected that quite a number of boys at school secretly fancied her because she was such an unknown and unknowable quantity. No one ever went as far as asking her out because she was too scary for any teenage boy – or grown man, for that matter – but the idea was there. And despite her fondness for suicidal celebrities, depression and black clothing, Bev had a wicked sense of humour and never failed to make me laugh.

In the sixth form Bev and I got into the habit of spending our free periods in King's Heath park. I'd eat my sandwiches and she'd chain-smoke until the nicotine rush made her queasy. Then we'd sit and pontificate about life in a way that makes me shudder with embarrassment just thinking about it. When everyone went off to university Bev didn't bother taking up her place at an all-women Oxford college to study Spanish and French but instead took a year out to travel around India. When she came home after five months it was to earn enough money to travel again, this time to Australia. After that she went to the Far East, spent some time in Japan then returned to India. By the time Gershwin got married, which was the last time any of us saw her, her trips back to England were infrequent.

Late on Sunday afternoon, having spent some time letting my mother's sprout-free Sunday dinner digest, I decided to make Bev the first of my old friends with whom I'd get in touch. Finding her current number was easy enough because I had her gran's phone number in Chelmsley Wood. Bev used to stay with her whenever even she felt she was getting too weird and in need of grandparental guidance. Although the old lady was hard of hearing, after a protracted, confused conversation she furnished me with an English phone number for Bev. I thanked her, said goodbye, and hung up. Then I picked up the phone again and dialled.

‘Hello?'

It was a woman's voice.

‘Hi? I'm looking for a Bev Turner?'

‘Yes?'

‘Are you her?'

‘I might be. Who's this?'

Suddenly I wasn't sure it was her.

‘It's Matt Beckford, an old schoolfriend of hers—'

‘Matt!' she exclaimed. ‘Matt Beckford! It's me, Bev. I didn't have the faintest clue who it was. I thought for a minute you were some sort of dodgy debt collector trying to get me for some misdemeanour of my youth.'

‘Got a lot of debts, have we?'

‘The odd unpaid credit card,' said Bev. ‘Or two. It's all debt left over from my globe-trotting days. Anyway, I think they've all blacklisted me now.' She laughed.'But that's okay, I just use Jimmy's.'

‘And Jimmy is?'

‘My bloke – or, more accurately, my husband, as of three months ago.'

‘Congrats.'

‘Never mind congrats, fella. What on earth made you decide to call me at three thirty on a Sunday afternoon after . . .' she worked it out ‘ . . . nearly six years of no see or hear – not that I'm not pleasantly surprised, of course.'

‘Well, to cut a long story shortish, I've been living in New York and I've just been transferred to Sydney and I'm here at home in Brum for a while – and, well, I was out for Gershwin's birthday—'

‘You still see Gershwin? How is he?'

‘He's fine. Zoë and he have a little girl now, Charlotte. She's four, I think . . . Anyway, we were out for a drink – in the Kings Arms, as it happens – celebrating the young man's thirtieth when we bumped into Ginny and, well, we all got talking and, well, I just wanted to see how everyone is. That's all. I just wanted to see if you're . . . okay.'

‘Yeah, I'm okay,' said Bev, thoughtfully.'Better than okay, in fact, and all the better for hearing from you.'

Over the next twenty minutes or so Bev filled me in with what she'd been up to since I'd last seen her. At the age of twenty-five she had decided after six years' travelling that it might be advisable to get a career on the go. She had worked as everything from a bee-keeper in Australia to the nanny of the child of the Malaysian answer to Cher. She returned to England and settled in Sheffield, where after several training courses she began teaching at an adult-education college and met her husband Jimmy, also a teacher. They fell in love, got married and bought a two-bedroomed cottage in a small village on the outskirts of Sheffield and were now reasonably happy after some bad news at the early part of the previous year. Bev had been to hospital for tests relating to stomach pains she'd been having. The doctors had sorted out the problem but in the process discovered it would be unlikely that she would ever have children. She told me all of this quite matter-of-factly, I suppose because she'd known so long that it had ceased to upset her. I just took it as yet further evidence of how strange life becomes the older we got.

‘You should come up and stay with us before you go to Australia,' said Bev, as we wound up the call. ‘I'm not just saying that. I really mean it.'

‘Thanks,' I said, and then we swapped addresses and promised to keep in touch.

(Then
:
the girl most likely to end up working for
a
glossy women's magazine
.
Now
:
lifestyle editor of the
Staffordshire Evening Herald
.
)