The Stranger You Know (17 page)

‘Then tell me everything.’

Rather to my surprise, he did just that.

In the summer of 1992, Angela Poole was fifteen. If anyone had ever deserved the name Angela, it was her, because she was as close as you could get to an angel on earth. She had heavy, honey-blonde hair and eyes the colour of a summer sky. She was small, and slim, and giggly. She wasn’t the best academically but she wasn’t stupid either, and she worked hard. She was a good girl, a sweet girl, and the only thing she ever lied to her parents about was her boyfriend.

‘Me, obviously.’ Derwent looked sheepish.

‘Bad influence,’ I commented.

‘Always.’

Everyone in Bromley knew who Josh Derwent was. He was a troublemaker, cheeky – a cocky little shit. He was always hanging out around the shops giving backchat to anyone who tried to tell him what to do. He went to school because he liked it and he was bright enough to be top of the class or thereabouts without making too much effort. He liked that he never got grief for being a swot because he was good at football – good enough to have a trial for Arsenal’s youth team.

‘Which didn’t go anywhere, as you might have noticed.’

‘Imagine if you’d become a footballer instead of a copper. This would be a mansion.’

‘And I’d be retired by now.’

‘But your knees would be knackered. No marathons for you.’

He raised an eyebrow. ‘I’d survive.’

How Josh had persuaded Angela to go out with him was no mystery. He was best mates with her brother Shane, and Angela had worshipped him for years. He was good-looking, funny and good at fighting. She was not the only girl who wanted him to notice her, but she was special. He’d watched her grow up without thinking anything of it – she was just a kid – until suddenly the day came when she wasn’t a kid any more. She walked into a room wearing tight jeans and a clinging top and he just about lost his mind. Couldn’t speak. Couldn’t think. He spent a year trying to convince himself she was too young for him, too sweet, too innocent, but no matter how many other girls he snogged, even when he was allowed to play with their tits, even if he was allowed the confusing and exciting treat of fingering them, he couldn’t stop thinking about her.

‘This is so romantic.’

‘This is how seventeen-year-old boys think. I’m sure you encountered your share of them, Kerrigan.’

‘I wasn’t allowed to know that sort of boy.’

‘Neither was Angela.’

Shane and Josh hung around with Vinny Naylor, and Vinny’s sister Claire. Vinny was the wise one, the one who called a halt when things were going too far. He had a good head on his shoulders and a genius for fixing things that were broken. Claire was a tomboy, one of the lads. Flat as a board, hard as nails. She and Vinny were born eleven months apart and did everything together, always; if Vinny was in the gang, so was Claire. Shane wasn’t all that thrilled about Angela coming along too, but there wasn’t much he could do about it. Josh was the one who called the shots. Shane went as far as warning him not to take advantage of his sister, and Josh thumped him for suggesting she might be prepared to have sex with him.

‘But you were hoping she would.’

‘I wasn’t trying to persuade her,’ Derwent snapped. ‘Fuck, I had this at the time. I didn’t want to corrupt her. I was in love with her. I wanted to wait. She was the one who—’ He broke off. ‘I’m getting ahead of myself.’

‘Get on with it.’

All that summer, during the long days when they weren’t at school, the five of them wandered around getting into trouble, having a laugh. During the nights, Angela and Josh spent every moment they could together, aching for each other. They had no money and nowhere to go. Josh had a part-time job washing dishes in a café in town. The only reason he kept it was because the owner was mates with his mum and he didn’t dare play up too much. The only reason he wanted it was to have enough cash to take Angela out now and then, to the cinema or into London to wander around. They couldn’t go to a pub because even if Josh could pass for over eighteen, Angela didn’t have a hope of fooling anyone. They couldn’t go to Josh’s house because his mum didn’t approve of him having a serious girlfriend at his age and she’d have flayed him alive if she thought they were even thinking about kissing, let alone having sex. Then there was Josh’s little sister, Naomi. Five years younger, she was a pain in the balls. She never left him alone when he was at home, and when he wasn’t there, she was always in his stuff. He got in trouble for shouting at her too. They couldn’t go to Angela’s because Shane would be there, glaring at him. Besides, Angela’s parents weren’t all that keen on him as a mate for Shane, let alone a boyfriend for their beautiful daughter. Claire and Vinny were two of the eight children in the Naylor family.

‘They were Catholics, as you might imagine. Irish background. Same as you.’

‘I’m one of two,’ I pointed out.

‘So your mum’s frigid or your dad couldn’t get it up more than twice. That wasn’t Mr Naylor’s problem.’

‘It sounds more like Mrs Naylor’s problem. Eight pregnancies is hard work.’

‘More that that. She had hundreds of miscarriages too. It was a four-bedroom house so God knows where they got the privacy to have sex.’

‘Or the time.’

‘Anyway, it was a madhouse, so we couldn’t go there.’

‘Where did you go?’

He had the grace to look shamefaced. ‘The cemetery.’

It was a good summer that year, no hardship to be outside. And the cemetery was easy to climb into, and had secluded corners where the trees and bushes grew close together, and had benches in it where you could sit for hours, staring at the stars. It was, by definition, quiet. They could be alone together which was more than you could say for any of the local parks. They were full of teenagers drinking and carousing once the sun went down. Josh didn’t really want an audience when he was with Angela. It might damage his reputation if people saw him handling her like she was bone china.

She was the one who made all the running. She was the one who whispered the things she’d like to do to him. She was the one who stroked his cock through his jeans, who went out with no bra on so he could see her nipples through her top, who bit his lip when they kissed and left purple love bites on his neck. She was the one who sat on his lap, straddling him, and ground her pelvis against him until he came in his pants.

I blinked. ‘You’re really not holding back, are you?’

‘You need to understand how it was.’ He picked up his beer but stopped before he drank from it. ‘That hasn’t happened since, obviously.’

‘Obviously.’

Josh got in the habit of bringing a rug and a bottle of wine when they went to the cemetery. He was careful not to let Angela drink too much because she wasn’t used to it and it made her silly. She had to face her parents when she got home and they were wary enough of her being out at all hours without her being blind drunk when she came back. She always left the house looking modest, with a cardigan hiding whatever skimpy top she was wearing to excite him, and her hair in a little-girl ponytail. Somewhere along the way she shed the cardigan, the hair-tie and her inhibitions. It scared him, sometimes, the way she was. It worried him. He was the one who tried to slow things down. But Angela had other ideas.

‘She wanted to pop her cherry before we went back to school. She had a thing about it. One of the reasons she was with me was because everyone knew I’d shagged around a lot.’ A long swallow of beer. ‘Which was a total lie. I’d never done it. I didn’t mind, obviously, because it was a lot better for my reputation. And the girls didn’t mind because it was a status thing to have shagged me – no one wanted to admit I hadn’t done it with them.’

‘Why didn’t you?’

‘I don’t know.’ He started peeling the label. ‘I couldn’t admit that I hadn’t. I couldn’t take the risk that when I lost it, whoever I did it with would tell everyone I was crap. I was scared, basically. Vinny had done it a few times, with a few different girls. Shane had a girlfriend called Mags and she was into all sorts. She had a copy of the Kama Sutra and she was making him work through it.’ He grinned suddenly. ‘Poor bloke. She wouldn’t let him skip anything. I still remember him saying, “Sometimes I just want a hand shandy and a nice lie-down”.’

I laughed with him. ‘Are you still in touch with Shane?’

‘No.’ The answer was quick, the change in his mood instant. The room felt colder and darker.

‘Back to the story,’ I said.

Josh wasn’t going to tell Angela he was a virgin too. There was plenty of time to confess when they were older. He’d already decided he was going to propose to her on her eighteenth birthday. If he trained as an electrician, he’d have to do an apprenticeship but then he’d be earning good money. There was always a demand for sparks in the building trade. His uncle was an electrician; he’d told him about it. The careers teacher at school shook her head over it because she wanted him to go to university, but he told her he’d made up his mind.

‘I thought the sun shone out of Angela. I’d have done anything for her.’ He sounded bemused. ‘Never felt that way about anyone before or since.’

‘The first time you fall in love is special.’

‘It was going to be the only time,’ he said coldly.

‘You were very young.’

‘I knew what I wanted. It was her.’

I nodded, thinking of my first serious boyfriend, Gerard, and how very glad I was that we hadn’t got engaged. He had cried every time we had sex.

Every. Time.

The charm of that kind of thing wore off after a while.

‘Anyway,’ Derwent said. ‘We were serious about each other is what I’m saying. And I’d have killed myself rather than hurt her.’

‘So what happened?’

‘I’m going to need another beer.’ He stood up and bolted out of the room and I could only wonder what was so bad that he wasn’t prepared to share it with me, given everything else he’d said without turning a hair. He came back with two bottles and handed me one.

‘I know you said you didn’t want one—’

‘But now I do.’

He opened his, then threw me his keys so I could use the bottle opener on his key ring. It was in the shape of a pair of handcuffs.

‘Cute,’ I observed.

‘It was a present.’

‘From someone who knows you well?’

‘Someone I was going out with a while back. She liked shagging a copper.’

‘Did you have to use your cuffs on her? Wear your uniform?’

He smirked so I knew he had, and I concentrated on swapping the bottle for the glass on the precious coffee table.
Never ask a question if you don’t want the answer
.

‘I appreciate you doing this, you know,’ Derwent said.

‘Noted.’

‘Do you need to call Rob to tell him where you are?’

‘No. He’s not my keeper.’ No need to tell Derwent he was thousands of miles away, I thought. ‘Where were we?’

‘Young. Happy. In love.’ He sighed. ‘Then everything turned to shit.’

I sat and listened while Derwent told me about the end of Angela Poole’s short life. I kept my mouth shut this time and let him tell it his way. And after the first couple of minutes, I think he’d even forgotten I was there.

1992

The mirror in the bathroom was steamed up, which wasn’t all that surprising after the – Josh checked – twenty-three minutes he had spent in the shower. The bathroom was tropical and he’d used all the hot water. He swiped at the glass with a towel and succeeded only in smearing it. He still couldn’t see himself clearly enough to risk shaving.

‘Fuck my luck.’ He ran a hand over his chin, feeling the velvety fuzz of a day’s growth. It wasn’t so bad that he had to shave, not really. But he had a bit of a thing about showing respect for Angela. When they spent as long snogging as the two of them tended to, any stubble at all made her skin go blotchy, which made her folks suspicious, and made him feel guilty.

So. Shaving.

He grabbed a towel and wrapped it around his hips, as low as he could sling it without it sliding off altogether. Then he leaned over and opened the bathroom window wide, resting his elbows on the sill. A lawnmower whined in the distance and some kids played on a trampoline in the garden behind, singing pop songs at the tops of their voices. Summer made him happy.

Angela made him happy.

The mirror was drying off and he could see himself in it again. He looked at his torso critically, wondering if it was his imagination that his chest and shoulders were bigger. He’d worked on them enough. He curled his arm, staring at the bulge of his biceps. Not bad.

He shaved quickly, without cutting himself, pulling faces in the mirror for his own amusement. God, it was boring. A lifetime of this, unless he grew a beard, but Angela wouldn’t like a beard. So no beard. He finished off with a handful of Cool Water, the aftershave she loved. It stung like a bastard on his skin and he swore, his eyes swimming in sudden tears. It was good pain, though. Part of the ritual, like wearing a clean T-shirt or checking the condoms were in the side pocket of his backpack.

The condoms. If she’d known they were there, they’d have done it the previous week. He didn’t know why he hadn’t said they were in the bag. He wanted to do it – God, he wanted it so much the anticipation sat in the middle of his brain, blocking all logical thought. He had to think around the sides of it as best he could. But when it came to it, he couldn’t just
say
it to her. Now, in the bathroom, he couldn’t understand why he hadn’t. She wanted to as much as he did, if not more. She’d have been delighted.

But tonight was the night. At last. He gave a shiver of anticipation and stared at himself again, wondering afterwards if he would look different or just feel different.

He was looking good, he decided. He was tanned. His hair hung down from a centre parting as far as his eyebrows. From the nape of his neck to halfway up his head he had a blade two cut. Mrs Beale at school had told him he looked like he should be in a boy band with a haircut like that, and he’d just looked at her without saying anything until she went red and walked off. It was common knowledge that she fancied him, undoing an extra button on her blouse before his class came in for their geography lesson. He didn’t mind. He never minded when women liked him. He liked saying things to see if he got a reaction from them – a catch in their breath, the blood coming to their cheeks, their pupils dilating. And it was so easy.