Out of My Depth (22 page)

The attic was fascinating. It was the only part of the house that Susie hadn’t included on the arrival tour. She had not even alluded to its existence. Amanda would have supposed, had she thought about it at all, that it was a cobwebby, dusty place containing a couple of boxes of junk — containing, perhaps, a sixteen-year-old Suzii, or a portrait of Suzii growing older the way she should have done. Instead, the floor was covered with clean white floorboards. It was Roman’s domain. There were pretentious, yet amateurish, abstract paintings on the walls, and they were definitely not Susie’s. In one corner, he had a rosewood writing desk, with pieces of paper and a laptop computer on it. By the window, there was his climbing gear. A snowboard and ski-wear were piled to one side, and two skateboards and all their accessories were in the far corner.

Are you, by any chance,’ she had said, looking around, ‘a man in search of direction? Christ, you need to get a job.’

‘Shut up,’ he said sharply, but he was smiling.

‘Where are the page-three girls?’

‘I hid them. For your benefit.’

‘So it wasn’t that spontaneous after all? You were planning to entice me up here?’

‘Only so I could push you out of the window.’

She leaned back beyond the point of logic, and let the rope, which was half an inch thick, take her substantial weight. Every muscle was in a spasm. She could smell the summer air, could hear the birds and, in the distance, a tractor. She knew she was suspended above priceless, and unforgiving, tiles.

‘I’m going to be sick,’ she said suddenly. She could taste the stodgy bread in the back of her throat. It was almost ironic, that.

‘No you’re not,’ said Roman. ‘You can do this, you know. Come on.’

Amanda opened her eyes and looked at him. She was harnessed to him. He was going to pay out the rope for her. Apparently he always tied his abseil rope to a beam in the attic ceiling, but this time he had placed himself between her and the beam. He was going to be in charge of her rope, was going to hold her weight. She doubted he could take it. He was probably less than thirteen stone. His body looked strong, because he obviously spent so much time whiling the days away with physical activities, but he was slight, even if he was tall, and she was convinced she was going to pull him out of the window. At least he had tied himself to the beam, as a precaution. She doubted that even her weight would pull the house down.

‘I really, really can’t do it,’ she said again. ‘And 1 really, really hate you.’

‘I know. Come on. You’re there, now. All you have to do is to pay the rope out and jump. Go on! You’re almost horizontal. The hard bit’s sorted.’

Amanda spluttered. ‘As the actress said to the bishop.’

‘Go on! Just fuck off down from there.’

She knew she couldn’t go back up, so on an impulse she bent her knees and kicked away as Roman had done. As she jumped, she let the rope slide through her harness, and by the time her feet hit the side of the house again, she was laughing. Another bound, with the wind in her hair, and she was almost on the terrace. It just took a little leap, and she was down with her feet on the Pyrennean slabs.

Roman was leaning out of the window. Amanda realised that she hadn’t done anything even slightly exciting for years.

‘I love you!’ she shouted up at him. ‘Can I do it again?’

That particular Wednesday, Suzii was longing for the PE period. This happened every week now, and had done ever since she had managed to instigate the Slackers’ Society by calling in a favour from Alissa McCall. Alissa did maths with her, and Suzii had cultivated her friendship because of the niggling feeling that it would be good for her to have a friend who was a sports freak. For some reason, she thought that having friends all over the year group stood her in good stead, and she made sure she was the least insular of her little group of friends.

Her friends were relentlessly anti-science. Suzii was taking maths to please her father, chemistry to ensure her inheritance, and art to annoy him. Amanda, Izzy and Tamsin would not be seen dead near a chemistry lesson, and often Suzii was glad.

This week, she was particularly keen to see her friends. She was desperate to talk to them. She thought that if she could speak about this thing, it would make it look better, smaller. She thanked God that, between them, she and Tamsin had managed to institute the Slackers’ Society. One of Lodwell’s sixth-form perks was the introduction of PE ‘options’. Sixth formers had an option to walk down the road to the sports centre and play squash for a double period before lunch on Wednesdays. Everyone who hated ‘games’ selected that one. They had all done it for a while: they had messed around in pairs on squash courts for an hour, and jumped up and pretended to play when Mrs Davis appeared in the viewing gallery. But it had been farcical, and boring, and a waste of time. Suzii hated exercise.

Then Tamsin heard from her mother that Mrs Davis had been abandoned by Mr Davis, and that she was, as a result, not at all interested in checking that everyone was playing squash. Suzii bought Alissa’s co-operation with a term’s worth of calculus, and a course of secret make-up lessons. She liked Alissa, who was tall and strong and sporty, and gruff and boyish and unfeminine. Alissa wore her mousy hair in a straight bob with a blunt fringe, and her glasses were exactly like the old NHS ones, with heavy brown frames that made her look like the school nerd. Alissa was funny and enthusiastic, but not many people outside her sporty circle knew it. Suzii was perfectly positioned to strike a bargain.

‘Are you sure?’ Alissa had asked, looking worried. ‘I mean, what if Davis finds out? She’ll come back one day and she’ll find me doing the register and marking you all down, and you won’t be there, and I’ll get in terrible trouble and she’ll go and drop me from the netball team or something.’

Suzii had laughed. ‘She won’t! If that happens, if you’ve already marked us down, we’ll say we did a runner afterwards. If you haven’t, then there’s no problem — we’ll be the only ones in trouble.’ Suzii threw in a shopping trip to Cardiff one Saturday, and cut some photos out of magazines for Alissa to take to her hairdresser, and the bargain was made.

As the bell rang for the end of break, three-quarters of the sixth form picked up their sports bags and headed across the school forecourt and out of the imposing front gates. It was the only time they were allowed to leave school during the day, and so the only time they ever left by the front entrance. At other times, a locked gate at the end of the playing field was the most convenient, least obvious exit. It was easily hurdled except by those in short, tight skirts, who had to perform an ungainly scramble. On Wednesdays, the sixth form walked in groups and gaggles down Cathedral Road, which ran alongside the park. They smoked, burped, and shouted lewd things at passing male cyclists.

Suzii, Amanda, Izzy and Tamsin had become complacent, so they blatantly turned the wrong way out of the front gate, and walked into Llandaff, where they went straight to the back room of a greasy café and self-consciously ordered white coffees all round. They were engaged on a joint project to get to like coffee, and the coffee here came with little plastic filters that sat on top of the cups. That, Suzii felt, was one step up from the kind of own-brand instant that was the standard fare in the common room. It was still rank. She tried to pretend to like it, but she had to get a Coke afterwards to take the taste away.

This particular Wednesday, Suzii could not even look at coffee. She couldn’t think about it. It was the beginning of the summer term, and she was worrying about a lot of things. She ordered herself a diet Sprite.

She looked wistfully across the formica table at Isabelle. Izzy never seemed to have the sort of problems she had. Izzy didn’t care about food, so she never overate and never dieted. She genuinely appeared to like coffee. She looked just right all the time. Whatever she wore, she looked like a goddess. She never had spots, never had crap hair, and she never took stupid risks because she knew her boyfriend would be angry if she kept saying no. Sometimes Suzii thought she hated Izzy. Most of the time, she worshipped her.

‘I feel sick,’ she announced. Her glass left a transparent ring on the table. She dragged the glass along a bit, smearing the lemonade around.

Izzy looked at her, with concern in her big green eyes. ‘Are you ill?’ she asked. Her hair was thick and loose, and Suzii was more aware than ever of her own limp black mop that was between styles.

‘Not infectiously,’ Suzii said. ‘I took the morning-after pill this morning.’

Tamsin’s head jerked up. Suzii thought she was looking at her with a little bit of admiration in her eyes. ‘Really?’ she said. ‘What happened?’

‘It was Jonathan.’

‘You and Jonathan did it?’ Amanda was excited on her behalf. In fact Amanda had appeared to be constantly excited ever since she had started screwing the builder.

‘Yes.’ Suzii felt tense, hoping someone was going to keep asking questions.

‘Hey, that’s great!’ said Izzy. ‘I’m thinking of losing my virginity to Jasper. What was it like?’

Suzii shut her eyes and wished the ache would go away. ‘I’m sure it’ll get better,’ she said, nausea rising in the back of her throat. ‘I hated it. It’s sore and I bled.’

‘And he didn’t use a condom?’ Amanda asked. ‘Or did it split?’

Suzii stared at the table. ‘We got a bit carried away.’

Tamsin tried to catch her eye. Suzii could feel her trying, and she refused to look up.

‘You mean, he got carried away,’ Tamsin said, heavily.

‘I said yes.’ She was utterly miserable. If this was sex, she didn’t know what she was going to do with the rest of her life. It had been crap and she never wanted to do it again. ‘It wasn’t rape,’ she added, although it felt like it.

‘Did he pressure you?’

Suzii smiled down at the table, not because anything was amusing, but because the only alternative was to cry. ‘Of course he pressured me,’ she said. ‘He said I was cold and he was going to find what he was looking for somewhere else.’

Nobody said anything.

‘Oh, Suzii,’ Izzy said, after a while. ‘You have to chuck him, you know. You’re not cold. Not at all. He’s not the one, that’s all. And he has no fucking right to speak to you like that.’

Amanda agreed. ‘Julian wanted to do it with me,’ she said, ‘but I didn’t want to. He didn’t say I was frigid but he nearly did. But when I met Dai, I couldn’t wait, I mean, I literally couldn’t get my knickers off quick enough.’

They all laughed, even Suzii.

‘We did gather that,’ Tamsin said.

‘But it’s true,’ Amanda continued. ‘My point being that you shouldn’t give Jonny Fartpants the time of day. Tell him! Tell him he’s crap in bed. Tell him you’ve told all your friends. It’s not you. It’s him. When you meet someone you fancy the arse off, it’s going to be completely different.’ She smiled to herself. ‘Believe me. I don’t even care about diets any more. Because Dai fancies me rotten.’

‘Amanda?’ Suzii asked, uncertain of herself and worried she was going to look a fool. She looked at her lap. ‘Erm, this is probably a silly question. But do you have . . . orgasms?’

Amanda smiled. ‘Do I hell!’ she said. ‘Lots of ’em.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Oh, you know. Believe me, you know.’ She leaned towards Suzii. And if you have to ask, you didn’t.’

‘Hmmmm.’

Tamsin turned to Suzii. ‘Suzii,’ she said, her words tumbling over each other. ‘I know this is a really crass thing to say but, if it’s any consolation, even though you had such a horrible time, I still envy you a bit. I kind of wish I had the chance to try sex. But nobody’s interested in me. Ever.’

Isabelle shook her head. All those boys at the Square Club think you’re fantastic,’ she told her friend. ‘It’s you that’s not interested in them.’

‘They don’t. They like me but they don’t want to go out with me. Let alone Have Sex. They just want to get pissed with me. I’m like one of the lads. They would walk across hot coals for you, Izzy. Not me.’

Suzii tried to enjoy her new, experienced status. It was true that sex was a divide, and that she had crossed it. That meant something. It meant she was soiled and spoiled, that she could never be a royal bride, and that in some countries she would now be unmarriable. She was no longer innocent, and she wondered if that meant she was guilty. It felt that way.

‘Morning-after pill?’ said Amanda. ‘You got a GP’s appointment before school?’ She sounded impressed.

‘Yeah. Well, with the nurse. I didn’t catch the bus, so I had to bribe Jackie not to tell Dad, and I turned up at the surgery crying and saw a nurse, and she nipped into one of the doctors and it was a horrible man, and he gave me a withering look, but he gave me the prescription. I had to take two pills, and some anti-sickness stuff which doesn’t appear to be working very well.’ She swallowed back some bile. And I have to take two more this evening. Then I caught the train in and just made it for registration.’

‘What did you tell Jackie?’

Suzii laughed. ‘Not the truth. That’s for sure. She’d blackmail me for ever. Just some rubbish about a row with Jonathan and needing to see him to make up.’

‘Amanda?’ Izzy said.

‘Mmm?’

‘Are you still going out with Julian?’