Tell Me Everything (6 page)

I put my hand up to my mouth when he finally drew away. I rubbed the tips of my fingers over my lips. It was a good thing I was sitting down already because my legs were shaky. It was as if Tim had sucked all the air from my body.

So this was what it was all about.

“Do you think we could do that again?” I asked.

He took the walnut from me. I hadn't realized I'd been holding it so tightly until I felt him pry my fingers open one by one to release it.

“No.” He shook his head. He'd stopped smiling now. “But tomorrow we can.”

I must have sighed then, because Tim took my hand and rubbed the dent that was still on my palm from where I'd been clutching the walnut.

“If we're spared,” he added.

T
he day after the Kiss was late-night shopping for the posh end of town.

Down at our side of the street though, we closed at five sharp every night. Sometimes Mr. Roberts and I would get the odd customer who'd come and press their nose at the door and rattle the handle, confused as to why they could buy designer shoes or fancy jewelry at eight o'clock at night, but not a box file or a pencil.

“Because we've got bloody homes to go to, mate,” Mr. Roberts would mouth at them, and I'd nod along with the righteous warmth of being on the inside although, of course, I didn't exactly have a home to rush back to.

I went to the bench instead and Tim was waiting for me, hunched up inside his sweater. He pulled the sleeves down to cover his hands, and a red scarf was wrapped tightly round his neck.

“It's a bit chilly,” he said, and then he stood up, took my hand and told me to trust him. I could almost feel the energy coming off him as he pulled me down half-lit alleys I'd never noticed before, through parking lots and shop yards. Waiters looked up at us
as they sat on the back steps of their restaurants, sipping coffee and having cigarettes before the evening rush began. An older man and young woman embraced just behind a half-open office door, his briefcase slotted between their legs.

Tim didn't say a word even as we passed through the automatic doors of the shopping center. He'd been hushing me all the way along as I tried to make conversation. We stood there for a moment, breathing in the smell of freshly baked bread from the cafe at the entrance.

“It's not real, that smell,” I rambled. “It's a spray they use, or they put it in the air conditioning. It was in one of Miranda's magazines. A woman once seriously hurt herself by—” I had to put my hand over my mouth to shut myself up.

Tim nodded briefly and then pulled me along again. In the town's one department store he led the way up to home furnishings, going not by the elevator or even the escalator but through an unmarked door and up by the staff steps.

“Are we allowed?” I asked, but he hushed me. He didn't hesitate once, not even when we passed a uniformed security guard coming down carrying three heavy boxes. Then through another door and we were back in the main part of the shop. We were standing in front of a display case full of glass ornaments when he turned to me.

“Have you seen anything more beautiful?” he said. “This is what I wanted to show you.”

He pointed at a statue of a polar bear, about six inches long, framed in a square box. The bear was made of clear white glass apart from its four cloudy legs and an etched expression of tran-quility on its face. The base was rough glass, spiked up to look like falling snow. The rim of the box was edged with gold. Inside, the bear had a curious wild dignity among the sparkly bejeweled cats and dogs it kept company with on the shelves.

We stood on either side of it. When I bent down to the bear's level I looked right through it and saw Tim staring just as intensely from the other side. But then he caught me looking at him and started to laugh. His smile was warm and real through the icy perfection of the glass. I felt something melt inside me as I laughed back. Then he stood up straight and held out his hand for me to walk round to him.

“It's trapped,” he said. “I come and look at it sometimes, to work out how I can help it break free.”

“Can't you just buy it?” I asked. “Or steal it.”

Tim shook his head. “That would just be forcing it into another kind of captivity,” he said. “It would be under an obligation then.”

“It's very beautiful,” I said, because it was. I didn't tell Tim I disagreed with him. There was a feeling of calmness about the bear that made me think it was exactly where it wanted to be.

“Come on, Molly,” he said. “Let's get ourselves home.”

“Home?” I asked.

He looked surprised. “To the bench,” he said. “Where else?”

“
I
didn't really mix with the girls at school,” I told Mr. Roberts from the top of my ladder. “All they seemed to talk about was makeup or dates or pop stars that my father had made sure I'd never heard of, but there was one girl, Leanne, who I liked. She spent a lot of time on her own too.”

The ladder shuddered as Mr. Roberts coughed. “Sorry, Molly,” he said. “Just not been feeling too good recently. Mrs. Roberts keeps on at me to go to the doctors.” He coughed again.

I shut my eyes until he'd finished. “You were never really allowed to stay in the school buildings at break time,” I said. “They had this idea that fresh air was good for you, but what it meant
was that everyone congregated in bits of the playground where you couldn't be seen and there they'd smoke or get up to other trouble. Sometimes they'd even creep through the trees and go into town. The older ones went to the pub.”

“Did you?”

“I wouldn't even have dreamed of it. Wouldn't have been worth the risk of my father catching me. Instead I begged this biology teacher to let me stay inside. I said I was frightened about being bullied, and to my surprise she believed me. She let me stay in the detention room, and while the other students were getting on with the punishments they'd been set, I'd sit there staring into space. The funny thing was that it got me the reputation for being a real hard case because all the other kids thought I wasn't bothering to do the extra work. I didn't mind that. It just meant people left me even more alone.”

“And that's where you met Leanne?”

“Yep. She was often there too. We never really talked but one day as she was leaving, she slipped something on my desk. I was about to call out after her when I looked at it. It was a lipstick in a shiny silver case. When I opened it up, I could see it was bright red. I slipped it in my pocket and tried to forget about it but I couldn't. I wasn't really a secret sort of girl at that time—too scared of everything—so this felt special.

“Of course when I got home, I couldn't resist trying the lipstick on in front of the mirror. It made me look older, harder, the kind of girl who wouldn't be bothered what her father thought. I pulled a chair over to the window and stared at the people passing by the street, hoping they would look up at me and see this mysterious, beautiful woman. I can't have been more than about fourteen.”

I could tell by the trembling of the ladder that Mr. Roberts was laughing below. Somehow I didn't mind.

“Anyway I was so wrapped up in this daydream that I didn't hear my father's footsteps outside the room. He stormed in, almost pulling the door handle off he was so angry.

“‘What the hell do you think you're doing?’ he yelled. ‘I come home tired from work, take one look up at my own house and what do I see but you sitting there half-dressed like a prostitute in Amsterdam. Clean that muck off your face straight away.’ “

“Were you half-dressed?” Mr. Roberts asked.

I'd been wearing my school uniform. My hair was tied up tightly in two plaits. I didn't even know at that time what a prostitute in Amsterdam looked like. I had to research it in the encyclopedia at the school library. I can still remember the shock it gave me, sitting there in the library reading about those women sitting in shop windows and realizing that's what my father thought of me.

“Molly, were you half-dressed?” Mr. Roberts's voice jolted me back to the present.

“Yes,” I said. “I'd stripped down to my undies. I was leaning forward so the men passing by could see all of me. Every so often I'd lift my leg and pretend to scratch it so I could stretch it out again, give them a better look. There were about five men standing outside the window watching me. I liked it. I liked them watching me. I put on a show. I promised them that I'd be there the next day too. That I'd give them a better look at everything then. I had no shame.”

Mr. Roberts tut-tutted with delight.

“I think I've finished up here now,” I said, shoving one of the boxes to the side with unnecessary violence. I pulled my skirt tight around my knees as I climbed down, smoothing it straight with my palms when I reached the safety of the shop floor.

“
T
im,” I said, hours later as we sat entwined on the park bench. “Why do we never talk?”

“Hmmm … ?” His foot stopped tapping on the grass. He lifted his chin up so he could look at me. “We're always talking,” he said.

“We're not. I don't mind. I just wonder if we should do a bit more sometimes. Maybe we could go to the pub or something.”

“Come with me.” He stood up and held out his hand to help me up. “Not that way!” I'd started to walk to the center of the park where the paths were brightly lit and clearly marked, but instead he took me into the bushes that edged the park, holding down branches for me to climb over, catching prickly twigs so they didn't tear my clothes. I followed him, complaining under my breath.

“Shhhh.” He put a finger over my lips to stop me. We were standing against a house wall that backed onto the park. “Put your ear to the wall.”

I did, but could hear nothing.

Tim frowned. “Now come this way,” he said. I followed Tim again round to one of the cul-de-sacs running off the park. “Stare
in the window as you walk past. Not too obviously, but take a close look.”

A woman was sitting on the sofa talking on the telephone. She was twisting a lock of hair round and round a finger, laughing and speaking into the receiver.

“And now come back and listen properly,” he whispered, and I made my way back. “Did you see her?” he asked. “Put your head really tight against the wall.”

I still couldn't hear anything but the bricks felt warmer against my cheek. I nodded at Tim, pretending it was working, and he looked pleased.

“I listen to her a lot,” he said. “She's one of my favorites. I call her the happy woman. But they're everywhere, Molly. Think about it. You don't even have to go against the wall once you become expert. People speak into the phone and someone miles away hears their voice, but what they don't realize is the hundreds of other people those noise waves have to go through in order to get to the right one. All those other words they've picked up on the way. That's why we're always talking. You just have to train yourself to listen.”

I said it made sense. That was the stupid thing. What Tim had just said made perfect sense. Before I followed him back, I put my ear back against the wall. I could swear I heard a giggle and then a series of random words—horse, field, bikini—prickling through my skin. It was as if I was joining in the conversation, a dowsing wand between both speaker and listener.

Tim and I fought our way back through the undergrowth in silence until we reached the bench. And then, as I was about to say something about his theory or just say anything because I wanted it to be only our words we heard between us, he kissed me.

T
he next night in Miranda's hair salon, Edith Piaf seemed to be the only person regretting nothing as Miranda cursed under her breath. She was struggling to perfect her backcombing technique on my hair, and things weren't going well. She'd already snapped at me for eating Smarties while she worked.

“Your hair's too thin,” she complained. “I don't think this is going to work. Are you sure you're eating properly? Your hair's not falling out, is it? I'm sure it was thicker than this last time.”

She kept peering across my shoulder at the magazine clipping she'd Scotch taped on the salon mirror. It was of a woman walking along a beach with two small dogs yapping at her heels.

“You can't even see what her hair looks like,” I pointed out. “And why is it my fault anyway?”

“It's the general spirit I'm after,” she said. “All that tousled pillow stuff and hungry eyes they're always going on about.” She hacked at my hair with her brush in angry up-and-down movements until it started to crackle under the strain.

I looked at my reflection, more unkempt witch than tousled pillow, before putting my fingers up to trace the outline of my lips. They seemed fuller somehow. Redder. A great big sign of how often I was being kissed these days. Tim and I still hadn't gone further although I kept my eyes shut often now, as he preferred, and leaned against him more with my whole weight, hoping he'd take the hint that I wouldn't really mind if he wanted to do a bit more. I closed my eyes now, feeling a tremor run through me.

“Now what's wrong with you?”

I jolted up in my seat as Miranda prodded me painfully on my shoulder.

“You're looking a bit peaked, if you don't mind me saying,” she said. “Do you want me to walk you back?”

“No.” I'd managed to keep Miranda out of my room so far,
just giving her the general impression that Mr. Roberts had created a flat upstairs, with bathroom and mini-kitchen. I didn't want any horror she might feel at my lack of home comforts to spoil my satisfaction at this life I was carving out for myself. I tried to change the subject. “So who is this woman you're torturing me into looking like anyway?”

“Oh Molly, you're not telling me you don't know who this is?”

“I am.” I couldn't help but laugh when I saw Miranda's expression. She was genuinely shocked.

“Now that's only Brigitte Bardot,” she said. “The original sex goddess.”

“Her?” I peeled the photograph off the mirror so I could look at it closer. “She's a bit old.”

“Well, she is now, silly. The life she's led though, makes your heart bleed. I'll tell you the whole story one day. And of course she's gone all animal-mad as those sorts of women always do when they lose their looks. But she was beautiful once.”