Precocious (15 page)

‘Well done, well done,’ you cried. Then with a flourish, ‘A triumph!’

I laughed.

‘Thanks, but …’ the buzz and hum of the other kids in my ear like the batting wings of moths, ‘it’s a thankless job, this writing lark, isn’t it?’

You smiled.

‘Oh dear. Sorry, sunshine,’ a gentle thumb on my chin, ‘should I have pulled you onto the stage to take your bow?’

‘God, no.’ I conjured a shudder. ‘I’m not one for basking in the limelight.’

‘Maybe not, but you ought to have a reward. That’s what I was trying to tell you before. I’ve got something for you.’ There was that conspiratorial wink again, that twinkle, and you looked genuinely excited. ‘I’ll give it to you in the car.’

Under the streetlight, I looked down at the beautiful wrapping paper – silver, tissue-textured, no Christmas adornments – and felt both thrilled and dismayed.

‘I didn’t get
you
anything.’

‘Don’t be daft. Just open it.’

The gift tag read:

It’s comforting to know that, in your hands, even an old classic can be improved. Keep the quill quivering! HM x

It was a book:
A Christmas Carol
, of course. A beautiful reprint of the first edition, a collector’s edition, with gilt-edged pages and pencil-drawn illustrations. Its covers were dark green leather and a silk ribbon marked page one of the story.

I lowered my face to it: its pages smelled of old bookshops, of pipe smoke and cinnamon.

At home, the presents that waited under the tree for me would be predictable: money stuffed in a card; a jumper. Sweets or chocolate that I used to like but didn’t anymore, hadn’t eaten for about five years except at Christmas, but I would smile and say ‘thanks’ and let the sugar dissolve behind my teeth, under my tongue. Yum, yum, and a sickly grin.

Your present was perfect.

Diary: Wednesday, 13 January 1993

Long conversation with HM on the phone. Three things I learned tonight:

He’s been setting some of my poems to music. Can’t wait to hear them!

He used to have nightmares about abacuses(?!). Feels like that should be abaci or something, actually … where is Sister Ignatius with her Latin grammar when I need her?

When the Fates separate us in a shipwreck, we’ll end up washed up on the same desert island. This is what he says.

Going to bed consumed by the biggest smile ever.

It was early, for me, for a Saturday. I’d been at Mari’s but even Todd was too stoned to have a decent conversation with. I’d felt bored. For a while now I’d had a sense there was something more for me, I just didn’t know where to look for it. When I tried to say this aloud, everyone either burst out laughing or stared at me, wild suspicion in their eyes.

It wasn’t long after kicking-out time – kicking-off time, in places.

Curtains were drawn over pubs doing lock-ins. The streets were strewn with chip wrappers and cigarette ends. It was cold and my walk was brisk and jumpy; I stared down at my feet in their black laced-up boots, dodging broken glass. I hopped from foot to foot, even as I paused to pet a bony dog picking listlessly at the remains of a fish supper.

It was then that I saw her.

Or maybe I heard her, first – I don’t remember. There was a low moan, as though from someone in pain.

I glanced down the alley and froze.

At first I thought she was in trouble, and I started to call out, but in the next instant found my own hand clapped over my mouth.

My mum was against a wall, her head turned to one side, her mascara smudged across the bridge of her nose.

The man kissing her neck was too small for her, in her heels. He was wearing a dirty coat, and his hair hung like pieces of rope on his shoulders. His hand was up her skirt.

I remembered a family summer, two weeks in a holiday camp, the four of us walking back from the sand dunes, rinsing off under freezing showers and laughing. The smell of frying onions and the ‘clink, fizz’ of different flavours of pop being opened. Cherry-ade, lime-ade. Pineapple-ade.

I turned away and looked up at the stars.

With one hand I scrabbled in the bottom of my bag, among sweet wrappers and hair slides, for coins; the other I held out over the road, a desperate flag to the passing taxis.

I recited your address to the driver as though reading lines from a play, and in minutes I was standing shivering at your door.

‘Can I come in?’ I tried to make my voice sound normal, but I don’t know what I must have looked like, or what you thought, having me turn up uninvited in the middle of the night.

‘I suppose you’d better, now you’re here,’ you said simply, watching the taxi turn around and drive back up the street.

It was only when you touched my cheek with your thumb that I realised my face was streaked with tears.

Your house was warm, and I sank onto the sofa.

‘I thought there was more for me,’ I said, ‘but there isn’t.’

You thought about this for a while.

‘You’re a bit young for a mid-life crisis, aren’t you?’

I smiled weakly, in spite of myself.

‘I don’t know. I feel
old
.’

I was suddenly aware that I looked different to how you will have seen me before: this was my Saturday-night self, in clothes I wore to try to impress kids I didn’t understand. I tugged miserably at the thick black tights, the laces on my boots. I wiped my eyes and a slick of charcoal make-up striped the back of my hand.

You brought me a cup of tea and my words started to tumble out, each phrase followed self-consciously by an apology or a retraction, hanging behind it like a shadow.

I was miserable, but I knew I didn’t have a proper reason to be. I was sorry.

I felt lonely, but I was lucky to have so many friends. I was ungrateful.

I was sad, but I knew there were people who had far less than me.
Just ignore me
.

‘It’s okay to be hurt,’ you said quietly, ‘and to admit it. No one can judge you or say you’ve no right to your feelings.’ You stroked my head. ‘That’s just it, you see – they’re
your
feelings.’

But I knew I was an impostor, a fraudulent visitor in the world of the miserable. On the sliding scale of happiness to unhappiness, I knew I was somewhere left of centre. Closer to Laura with her perfect home-life than to Mari who, for all her bravado, had the grief of an absent father and the problems of a dozen screwed-up, drugged-up kids who called themselves ‘friends’ on her shoulders. Further away still from the kid at school whose little brother was just killed in a car accident. He had real sadness now in his empty eyes, and no one knew what to say to him, which must have made it even worse.

‘I shouldn’t have bothered you. I’ll probably be alright tomorrow. See?’ I laughed, ‘I can’t even do teen angst right.’

‘You should let your mum know where you are,’ you said, reaching for the phone.

‘She’s not there.’

You frowned.

‘Your dad, then.’

‘He won’t care. He won’t even notice.’

‘I think you’d be surprised.’ You pushed the receiver into my hand and I watched you dial, noticing with a little thrill that you knew the number off by heart.

I listened to it ring and, hearing a voice on the click, whispered to you, ‘It’s Alex.’ Then, into the mouthpiece:

‘It’s me. I’m … err … I’m at Mari’s.’ I looked at you; you raised an eyebrow but said nothing. I turned from you slightly and lowered my voice, but knew you could hear me, of course.

‘Yeah, well. Just tell Dad, will you? Yeah. I’ll be back …’ I paused, glancing over my shoulder at your expressionless face. ‘What? Yeah, I’m still here. Tell him I’ll be home … in the morning.’ I hung up carefully and passed the phone to you.

You smiled. ‘Okay. Come on, kid.’

You headed for the bedroom and I followed; you handed me a T-shirt and left the room while I got changed, but you didn’t offer the spare room and I didn’t ask.

Climbing under the covers, you said quietly, ‘What’s this really all about, Fee?’

I thought for a while.

‘I’m afraid,’ I said. ‘I’m afraid because I’m not important, I’m not special. I’m nothing.’ And I started to cry again.

You put your arm around me, your breath in my ear.

‘You ARE important, you ARE important,’ you chanted, rocking me back and forth, ‘a gift in a million.’ And you held me until sleep took over.

I woke up at 5 a.m. and I smiled, because this was the time of morning you always said you woke up having dreamt something weird, then found yourself unable to get back to sleep. I waited for you to stir, but you didn’t. Perhaps I was your cure. I looked around the room. Everything was in shadow.

I leaned into you and kissed your shoulder. Without opening your eyes you mouthed ‘Morning’ and pulled me closer. I kissed your mouth, and this time you didn’t stop me.

I took your hand and placed it up inside the T-shirt, but you didn’t seem to know what to do, it just lay there, like a stone. You were so unlike the boys I knew, the boys of Mari’s parties with their hot mouths and insistent fingers.

You kept kissing me, our lips glued grimly together, as though you were afraid that if I pulled away I might see something I shouldn’t see.

I opened my eyes and saw you in extreme close-up: your nose, your eyebrows. I closed them again and slid my hand under the covers.

You put your hand over mine, helping me find your rhythm, and I felt anger welling in me.
I can do it
, I thought,
I’m not a child
, so I bit you. I bit your bottom lip, a bite that said
stop it
.

But in a few moments we found our pace, and you made a soft noise, and I thought,
that’s it
, I’m affecting you, that’s what I want, and when you took your hand away and touched my face, it felt like trust.

Afterwards, there were more tears, I didn’t know why, but you kissed them away and for that moment I felt safe.

You drove me home, holding my hand all the way, down by the handbrake where no one could see.

Your crooked smile when you dropped me off; almost shy.

I never told you; maybe you knew. It was my fifteenth birthday.

The second time I see her, I’m already anticipating that there will be a third time.

I’ve read my fairy tales, you see; I know these things come in threes. Once the second night has passed, second house has been blown down, second wish has been granted, a child listening to a fairy story waits with gleeful anticipation in the knowledge that the third time is coming, and this will be the time that the prince gets the girl, or the troll is defeated, and everyone lives happily ever after. The third time means something; it can’t be ignored.

The second time I see her is innocent enough, and can’t even be called an encounter since she doesn’t see me.

I’ve disentangled myself from the bubble you and I have created and walked into town for a dose of reality, to clear my head. You offered to drive me; I declined gently. You protested and asked how long I would be gone.

‘An hour or two,’ I shrugged, ‘that’s all. And we have six weeks of holiday coming up, remember?’ That is, you do; I have two weeks to take and a job I can turn up late for and come home early from without too many people even noticing. I’m looking forward to seeing more of you but I can’t help feeling intensity creeping like a cloak around me.

It’s a sort of sense check exercise; just seeing if the world is still there, where I left it. In a small way it’s about seeing if I’m still there, too, because as much as I love being holed up in your house with you, I sometimes wonder if when I hit the fresh air I’ll wake up and feel different, like after a hangover or a long flight.

Of course, not much in the city has changed: the same bustle and buzz, people laden with oversized department store bags, larger and probably more glamorous than their contents. Painted faces laugh at each other over coffee cups and clinking wine glasses. There is sun today, and a close-fitting heat, so people are outside, dipping into shops only half-heartedly, only for a few moments of air con, sifting listlessly through clothes rails before slipping their shades on and stepping back out into the glare.

It rains so often in this city that when the sun shines everything looks new and clean.

I pass a shop assistant on a break lighting a cigarette, her poise and outfit mirroring those of the mannequin in the window behind her. She rolls up her sleeves, giving her milky arms five minutes of sun, and sucks in smoke with scarlet lips.

People are gathered around the fountains, kids on skateboards and teenagers necking. There’s an end-of-term feeling in town today, and I can’t help smiling as it spills over me, and I stop to listen to a cheery busker playing Beatles songs. It’s at this moment, through the fine spray of the fountains, that I see her.

She’s laughing, and she’s with a guy about the same age as her, and both of these facts register immediately as relief. A normal girl; happy. Her name runs through my head like ticker-tape,
AliceAliceAliceAlice
, and I have to stop myself from calling it out. For an instant I want her to see me. Why would that be?

I watch her tossing back her hair, touching the boy on his arm, and I try to burn this new, carefree Alice onto my brain, by way of erasing the other girl who looked at me at my office with pleading eyes. But my feet are edging me in her direction.

The opening chord of ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ suddenly pushes into my consciousness and, distracted, I stop and look around at the busker, and the crowd who have gathered and are dancing around him.

It’s only a few seconds, I squint in the sunlight and when I turn back, she’s gone. Like a ghost: gone, but leaving traces, a change in the air.

I go to Mari’s flat to pick up my post.

‘You had a visitor,’ she says. The ticker-tape is back,
AliceAliceAliceAlice
, and with it, a thudding in my chest. When you’re afraid of something, at the slightest sign it’s always the first thing you assume has happened. It’s a protection mechanism: if I imagine it, then it’s imaginary, ergo not real, so it can’t have happened.