Growing Up Twice Read online

  ‘Well, we’ve just done AS levels. I was bloody crap – reckon I failed them all.’ He gives a kind of Gallic shrug, confident and carefree. ‘It’s the end of the summer holidays now. Ages off, it was fantastic, man. But I’m eighteen in a few weeks so I’m having a right big party, with a DJ and that, like you did. You should come.’

  Sarah has taken the end of the ribbon of her draw-string top in her mouth and is chewing it. Now she is looking at him. He is definitely not looking at her.

  ‘I’d love to.’ I put my hand on his wrist. It turns out he has light golden skin and fair little hairs on his forearm. He has long fingers stained with biro. They remind me of a guitarist I once knew.

  ‘Yeah, your mum said you should have adults present,’ Sarah says. Michael blushes, until the pink flush clashes with his hair. I think he is more embarrassed for me than himself, but her words sink in and I suddenly catch my reflection in a mirror and see a dishevelled twenty-nine-and-nearly-two-halves-year-old woman flirting with a kid who is not even eighteen yet. Trounced by a newcomer, I feel panicky. I need to see the others. I need to get back to my world. My excursion is suddenly over.

  ‘Look, I should go, I’ve got to meet my friends. It was nice to see you, though.’ It is the lie I tell most next to ‘I’ll call you next week.’

  I walk down the street about to call Rosie on my mobile to find out where they are, when suddenly he is walking next to me. I stop. If I had run that far that fast, I think, I would have been out of breath. He isn’t.

  ‘Can I borrow your phone?’ he says and takes it out of my hand. He dials and a few moments later I hear a ringing from the pocket of his combats. He hands it back to me.

  ‘Now I’ve got your number and you have mine,’ he says quietly. He is looking at me again and I am suddenly aware that he is taller and broader than I am and that the sunshine makes me want to touch his hair.

  He places the palms of his hands either side of my face and kisses me. A breeze is shaking the petals from the tree we stand under and they float down like snow. I feel a sense of déjà vu; he is reminding me of something that I miss, I lean towards a memory. We part and he stands back and looks at me, he bites his bottom lip. I have nothing to say.

  ‘I’m going to call you,’ he says with resolution and turns, walking away quickly without looking back. I stand there for a moment to collect myself; there is a gradual subsidence of physical sensation. I find I am regretting its regression.

  My phone rings and makes me jump. I half want and expect it to be him but Rosie’s name flashes. I press ‘OK’ and everything clicks back into place.

  ‘You are never going to believe this,’ I say.

  Chapter Four

  I press ‘End’ on my phone two seconds before I push the door of the pub open, and I don’t have to look around for them because a two-double-Bloody-Marys-at-least cheer greets me as I walk in.

  ‘Here she is!’ Rosie shouts. ‘A Mrs Robinson for the twenty-first century!’

  Selin is wiping the tears of laughter from her eyes as I sit down at their table. It’s almost twelve o’clock; there aren’t many people in the pub, but the few that are there are the faithful, the Coach and Horses characters.

  Long coated, long haired or shaven headed, designer glasses, notepads and pens in pockets, portfolios and Filofaxes tucked under arms. Poets, painters, media boys and girls all Guinnessed up or whisky chased rather more than is recommended and thoroughly disapproving of us, flippant, drunk and laughing as we are.

  That is one of the reasons why we come in here. It wasn’t long ago that I was in a relationship with one of these types, for three years, in fact. I have a vague female notion that I’m annoying him by proxy with my flippancy. Owen was a serious man. He always carried a volume of Proust, he thought a lot about death. It would have been no surprise if I had been presented with the opportunity to annoy him in person in this pub where we had our very first date. But in the last few months since our relationship finally ended for good I haven’t seen him once. I’ve gone to the same places and hung out with the same people but our paths never crossed. Selin says it’s God’s way of protecting me from myself, but then she never did approve of us very much. Actually, none of my friends approved of him very much and all of his friends disapproved of me.

  ‘Tell us again, pleeease,’ Selin pleads, ‘I only got Rosie’s half of the conversation.’ Her black eyes sparkle and she flashes her famous three-cornered grin at me.

  ‘Get the drinks in then!’ I say and sit back in my chair smiling. I’m happy; not ten minutes ago I was kissed and now here I am with my two best friends, the greatest story to tell and a large Bloody Mary. Daylight fights its way through the frosted glass, bouncing off glasses and bottles, illuminating the slowly turning unfolding swirls of smoke. The smell of ash and old beer seems suddenly appealing. There is nothing like the slow and somehow illicit pleasure of daytime drinking.

  ‘He’s sixteen,’ Rosie says, leaning back on her chair so that it balances on two legs (just like she used to in the back of the class), fanning her flushed face with a beer-mat.

  ‘Nearly eighteen, actually,’ I say, slightly annoyed that she is hijacking my moment.

  ‘He’s a ginger,’ she continues, putting her hand on my wrist as if to restrain me, but really to stop herself from tipping over.

  ‘No. No,’ I protest. ‘More sort of blondey auburn.’ Selin looks at me over the top of her glass and raises one of her dark, beautifully arched eyebrows. She is the only one of us who can do this. Many a teenage evening was spent practising in front of mirrors and only she managed it. She’s been flaunting it ever since.

  ‘He is skinny and has spots.’ Rosie drains the last of her drink and rattles the remaining ice-cubes under my nose. ‘Your round.’

  ‘He’s filled out a lot since you saw him last, and his skin has cleared up. God, I’m twenty-nine and I still get spots,’ I say, aware that I’m losing all comedy value by defending him too much. The bar is only two feet away and we carry on talking as I go to get the drinks in. A man with a long grey pony-tail turns his back on me and tuts.

  ‘I don’t remember seeing him at that party. Did I see him? Why didn’t I see him?’ Selin says.

  ‘Because he passed out after about five minutes on Jen’s bed and you were too busy snogging that Spanish truck driver,’ Rosie reminds her.

  ‘Oh yeah, Raoul,’ she giggles quietly to herself. ‘It turned out he was from Bromley.’ I return to the table carrying three glasses simultaneously, a trick I learnt back in my barmaid days.

  ‘No, you’re joking! He was so convincing,’ I cry. ‘He gave me a recipe for paella! Hang on, why didn’t you tell us this at the time?’

  ‘Wasn’t even of Spanish extraction. I can’t remember why. It wasn’t that good a story.’ Typical Selin. Rosie and I will tell anything to anyone, but Selin is just a little bit more remote. Always up for a carefree snog and a dance when we’re out but she hardly ever gets involved past that, never swaps phone numbers, never arranges dates and never takes anyone home. I don’t mean she hasn’t had her wild moments, and she’s certainly no virgin, but some time over the last couple of years she just decided to become much more reserved and cautious. I wouldn’t be surprised if Rosie and I hadn’t put her off men for ever. She’s had one long-term relationship (with a boy from her street) and they only split up because she felt she was too young to get married; they’re still really good friends. She never gossips about her personal life, never spills her guts the way Rosie and I do. It’s like getting blood out of a stone. Sure, she complains sometimes about her job, or money, or the lack of a good man, but in general she is very serene and sort of complete. She doesn’t seem to carry the angst that Rosie and I have been investing in so heavily for so long. Well, not her own angst. She’s carried a lot of ours over the years.

  ‘This country. Can’t trust anyone,’ Rosie sighs, and I’m not sure who she is referring to.

  ‘Back to the boy!’ Good, Seli
n is curious.

  ‘Well, he just ran up to me, grabbed me and kissed me. Right there in the street! It was kind of sweet really. You know, romantic.’ I can’t help the coy little smile that curls up the edges of my mouth.

  ‘Romantic!’ they cry and grab each other in a mock melodramatic clinch.

  ‘Wasn’t it sloppy and dribbly?’ Selin asks.

  ‘No!’

  ‘Tongue like a Rotavator?’ Rosie enquires in her usual forthright fashion.

  ‘Certainly not.’

  ‘Teeth and nose bumping?’ Selin.

  ‘No. None of that, it was nice, he was good. I mean, look, we all had our first snog at around fifteen, right?’

  ‘I was eleven,’ Selin said.

  ‘I was nine,’ Rosie chimed in. ‘Edward Stone, back of the art class.’

  ‘OK, I had my first snog at fifteen.’

  ‘And eleven months and two weeks. I remember because it was at Cathy Barker’s sixteenth and yours was two weeks later. You snogged that bloke who went mental a couple of years ago. It could have contributed.’ Rosie grinned.

  ‘His name was Sam Everson and he didn’t go mental, he had a breakdown and it was years later when I didn’t even know him. And my point is, even I, late flowerer that I was, had had three years’ intensive snogging practice by his age. I was pretty good at it by then. So our kiss was accomplished, romantic and even a bit sexy and anyway, god-damnit, I haven’t had a snog in ages and I enjoyed it!’ I’m slightly flushed and the tingle of the Tabasco is melting the back of my throat.

  Rosie and Selin look at me. They look at each other. They look at me. Selin purses her lips, getting ready to be maternal.

  ‘You fancy him,’ she says.

  ‘I don’t! I’m just saying it was nice!’ I roll my eyes up to the nicotine-coloured ceiling.

  ‘You fancy him. You fancy him, you do. Please God don’t tell me you’re going to phone him, because I know you’re not. You’re not, are you?’ Selin is anxious and I know why. She has seen me merrily trot off, usually in cahoots with Rosie, into one outlandish and disastrous encounter after another. She has been at our respective doors with two bottles of wine and a large bar of chocolate on more occasions than we can remember. When Rosie moved in with me after she split up with her ex, Chris, just after Owen dumped me for the last time, Selin even remarked on the fact that our flat sharing would save her a bus fare at least (and God help the neighbourhood).

  ‘Of course I’m not!’ I say and I mean it. I’m not. Really.

  ‘You should,’ Rosie says. ‘You might be his first. You could teach him how to pleasure a woman.’ And she says it with a fake French accent.

  ‘I doubt it very much, if his slutty-looking girlfriend was anything to go by,’ I say, somewhat unfairly, driven by an unhealthy and arbitrary competitive streak. ‘But it doesn’t matter because of course, of course, I’m not going to phone him. And if he phones me, I shall be very sweet so as not to drive him to breakdown in later life.’ I look pointedly at Rosie. ‘And I shall say I can’t see him again, thank you very much.’

  ‘Unless he has two good-looking friends.’

  Oh, Rosie.

  Chapter Five

  This morning when I open my eyes, for the first time since spring the electric light from the hallway is casting a yellow glow under my bedroom door. Rosie is up already and autumn is on the way. I can see a chink of blue sky through my curtain, but the cast of the light bulb somehow reminds me of being cold and I turn my back on the window and curl up. Now I can see my phone.

  The third requisite day between swapping your phone number and getting the call isn’t, strictly speaking, until tomorrow. I had thought that, being young and presumably impetuous, he might have called me sooner, but I guess they learn the mind tricks even earlier in man development these days. I think he will phone me tomorrow. I don’t mind if he doesn’t phone me. It will be easier in a way. It’s just the waiting. It’s annoying, and even more annoying when you’re waiting for a call from someone you don’t want to call you.

  But I’ll leave my mobile switched on, just to get it over with. I mean, I don’t want to have to call him back, do I?

  It’s Monday. I imagine Rosie is up before me because she has got today off and a day-long date planned with this man she met through work. They are going boating. It’s an original idea for a date and Rosie likes to be original. Her last first date took place in a yoga class. ‘Well, at least you’d know if he was up to it,’ she had said mysteriously. But apparently he wasn’t, because she had only seen Yoga Date Man the once.

  She has this strange superstition that to refer to a man by his actual name, until they have seen each other at least four times, means that the relationship will end prematurely. Consequently I have never learnt the names of very many of her acquaintances. Her ex, Chris, was Total Fox Man the first few times I met him, which I thought was a debatable tag. Self-important Slimy Git Man was how Selin and I referred to him in private, until the shock news of their whirlwind engagement. After that we thought it best to be more polite about him.

  I’m not good at mornings, they get me down. I always stay in bed a bit too long, spend a bit too much time over breakfast and a bit too long in the shower. I never can find anything clean or nice to wear and it takes me two and a half cups of instant before I can really take in the day. Although I don’t mind my job, because for the first time ever I’m earning a real wage, and the people are nice and I get listened to sometimes, I just sort of stumbled into it rather than found my vocation and usually, just before I open the door to leave in the morning, I take a deep breath and say, ‘Oh well, here we go again.’

  Rosie comes out of the bathroom. She looks dreadful: her blonde hair is in tangles, she has dark smudges under her bloodshot eyes, and her face is still creased with the marks of a restless night.

  ‘I feel awful.’ She slumps against the bathroom door. ‘I’ve been throwing up since dawn.’

  ‘Oh, poor love, did you get a take-away last night?’ I ask her.

  ‘No, toast.’ She must feel poorly, she can’t string a sentence together.

  ‘Booze?’ I ask cautiously, it was my first guess. Over the last week or so I have noticed the effects of her hangovers keep her in the bathroom longer than usual, but she gets sensitive if you mention her drinking and it’s too early to face a fight.

  ‘No, not a drop.’ She rubs her eyes and tucks her usually silky hair behind an ear. ‘I feel strange.’ I follow her into her room and she sits on the bed.

  ‘Do you want me to phone thingy and cancel him?’ I offer. It wouldn’t be the first time. Once I told someone she had had to emigrate overnight for legal reasons.

  ‘Mmm, yes please.’ She gets back into bed and pulls the duvet up under her chin.

  ‘Jen?’

  ‘Yes, love?’

  ‘Mumphalaeneltnt,’ she mumbles.

  ‘Pardon?’ Three or four deep breaths pass and she repeats herself a little more clearly.

  ‘I think I might be pregnant.’ A brief moment of horror passes through me and I take a deep breath and calm down. This is probably typical Rosie overdramatics. She couldn’t possibly be sick just because she ate or drank too much.

  ‘Don’t be silly, you haven’t done it with anyone since the husband, right? And that was months ago.’ I can say this with confidence because we really do know everything about each other’s lives. And if ever there has been something we haven’t told each other for one reason or another we always break the ice by buying each other a Mars Bar. Over the years it has become a symbol for big news. Selin blames our gradual weight gain throughout our twenties on Rosie’s erratic and tumultuous life, which seems fair, as most of the Mars-Bar-related news has come from Rosie, with quite a bit from me, and there has been none from Selin for years. And of course Rosie eats what she likes and never puts on a pound.

  ‘I’ve missed two periods, I’m about to miss a third.’ This comes from under the duvet. Two periods, that’s OK. T
his girl from work didn’t have a period for a whole year, sometimes it just happens.

  ‘I think you’re overreacting, Rose. I mean when? Who?’ Personally I think it’s probably stress and a lifestyle that doesn’t exactly bode well for the natural rhythms of the female cycle.

  ‘Chris!’ The name comes out in a high-pitched little screech. Chris her erstwhile husband, Chris?

  ‘But, mate, you’ve been living here for eight months. The last time you saw Chris was at that dreadful work party and he was there with his new bird and you said she was fat … although she probably wasn’t, you think anyone over a size eight is fat.’

  Another muffled strangulated sound comes from under the covers.

  ‘Rosie? Come on, tell me.’ A hand appears and fumbles around on the bedside cabinet, around two glasses of stagnant water, a pewter hip flask, an aromatherapy candle, some neatly folded lottery tickets and an empty packet of Hula Hoops, until it finds the edge and then the knob of the drawer. Opening it, the hand disappears briefly and returns clutching a Mars Bar. King size.

  ‘Oh, Christ,’ I say and immediately unwrap it and take a bite. It’s 7.45 a.m. The ritual now complete, she pushes back the covers and looks at me.

  ‘I’d check the sell-by date, if I were you, I’ve been meaning to give it to you for weeks.’

  ‘What happened?’ I say, not sure that I really want to know.

  Rosie’s alarm-clock radio clicks on suddenly and the room is filled with the intrusive blare of some dreadful carping ‘breakfast crew posse’. She reaches over, turns it down and leans back against the wall holding her spare pillow to her chest like a child with a toy. I can see she has hardly slept. She must have been thinking about this for weeks, poor love. She rubs her fingers across her tired eyes and begins.

  ‘Well, it’s mostly like I told you. Remember I had to take some clients to that ridiculous awards ceremony a few weeks ago? I knew that Chris would be there because his team was nominated for Best Child-orientated Campaign which is why I got that new dress and shoes. And bag. And my hair done, purely for the “ha-you-sucker” factor. And of course he was there and he brought “her” with him. And she was fat, honestly. Or if she wasn’t fat she shouldn’t have worn a skirt that short. Well, he clocked me, of course, and we sent each other a few glares and I was very happily having a few glasses of champagne, because you know it was free, and talking to Yoga Date Man, that’s where I met him, remember? Well, then I went off to “powder my nose” so to speak and …’ She stopped and clapped her hand over her mouth.