And Baby Makes Two (3 page)

Les took me home when he finished work. I couldn’t believe my luck. He not only had a job and a flat (well, a room in a flat), he had a car. It wasn’t a Porsche or a Jeep or anything cool like that, but it wasn’t an old banger like Charley’s van that you had to park on a hill so you could get it started the next day, either.

It had gone midnight by the time we got to my road. I made him let me off at the corner. In case she was hovering behind the curtains.

“Are you sure you’ll be all right?” asked Les. “I could come in with you if you want.”

He sounded really concerned.

“No, I’ll be fine.” I undid my seat belt and took hold of the door handle. “She isn’t violent. She’s just a pain.”

The last thing I wanted was for him to meet Hilary. Women often end up looking just like their mothers. Oprah did a whole programme on it. What if Les took one look at
her
, decided that was what I was going to end up like, and I never saw him again? Plus, she’d be sure to tell him I was only fifteen. Probably before I’d even introduced him. “You know she’s only fifteen,” she’d say. “Do you want to go to prison?”

I pulled on the handle. “She’ll be in bed now anyway,” I lied. “It’ll be all right.”

Les grabbed my right hand.

When you’re little, you think a lot about whether or not you should kiss a boy on the first date. Will he think you’re easy? Will he think you kiss every boy you meet like that? Will you catch something?

But since we hadn’t technically been on our first date yet, I didn’t worry about it. As soon as I felt his skin on mine I turned to face him. I’d practised kissing my pillow and stuff like that (so I’d know what to do), but kissing Les was not like kissing my pillow. His lips were warm, and soft as the centre of a chocolate cream. I was melting from within. I didn’t even jump or gag or anything when he stuck his tongue in my mouth. It was hardly slimy at all.

“How about Sunday?” he whispered when we came up for air. “I’ve got to work Saturday and Sunday night, but we could do something in the afternoon. After lunch.” He stroked my hair. “If you’re not busy.”

He had to be joking. I would never be busy again in my life.

She was waiting up for me, of course. She’d ruined the first part of my birthday for me, and now she was determined to ruin the last part as well. She must’ve sensed I was having a good time somewhere. I always said she was a witch.

She launched herself from the window as soon as she saw me come down the street and popped out of the living-room like a cuckoo in a clock as soon as I stepped into the hall.

“I’d like to talk to you,” she said in this dead flat voice.

She was a bit drunk. Alcohol’s meant to make you jolly, but she always gets really earnest and serious when she has a bit to drink.

I didn’t meet her eyes. I wasn’t going to let her spoil what had turned out to be the best night of my life. I was going to go to bed and pretend that Les was beside me, holding me tight, telling me how wonderful I was.

I locked the front door and marched past her.

“Lana. Did you hear me? We need to talk.”

I opened the door to my room. “Talk to yourself,” I said. “I’m going to bed.”

“I’m your mother,” she said. No one could ever accuse Hilary Spiggs of being original. “I think I have a right to know where you’ve been all night.”

“Selling my body,” I said. “Where else?”

I would’ve slammed the door in her face, but she’d wedged herself against the frame.

“Lana, look, I know I overreacted—”

She touched my shoulder. I jumped as if she’d stabbed me.

“Get your hands off me,” I ordered.

She got her hands off me. She must’ve been more drunk than I thought, though, because she almost looked like she was going to cry.

“I’m sorry, Lana. I don’t want things to be like this.”

Maybe if I hadn’t had the best birthday of my life, and maybe if I hadn’t realized I had enough power to make her cry, I would have broken down then and said I was sorry too, and everything would’ve been different. That’s what I think now, at any rate. But it’s not what I thought then. I didn’t care that she was sorry. I was chuffed I could make her cry. And I didn’t give a stuff what she wanted. I was like Dorothy in
The Wizard of Oz
, standing on the yellow brick road with the Emerald City shimmering in front of me. Only it wasn’t the Emerald City I saw, it was my future. It was nearly six feet tall, had a tongue like a lizard’s, and drove a Ford.

“Well, that’s the way they are,” I told her. And I gave her a shove that knocked her against the wall and slammed my door behind me.

My mother always told me that love wasn’t like it is in films and songs and stuff like that. Meaning that it wasn’t like that for her. Charlene and Dara’s father died when they were little. Hard though it was to believe, the Spiggs had been madly in love with him. She married my father because he was the best she could get with two children and cellulite and her lousy personality. Charlene and Dara’s father was God’s gift to the earth; mine was a reminder that God likes to punish people.

“You don’t just meet someone and BOOM, you’re in love,” my mother had told me. “Real life isn’t like in films.”

I didn’t believe her when I was twelve, and now that I was fifteen I knew she was lying. She wanted me to have the same miserable life she had, that’s why.

Love was exactly like it was in films: BOOM.

One minute you’re just an ordinary person, waiting for something great to happen, and the next minute – BOOM – something great has happened. You feel happier than you’ve ever felt before – than you ever thought you could feel.

I’m not sure if I fell in love with Les when he kissed me, or if it happened before that, when we were talking in McDonald’s. Not that it mattered. I knew that first night that he was the man I’d been waiting for since I was born.

After she stopped shouting at me through the door and finally staggered off to her own room, I put a Celine Dion CD in my Discman and lay on my bed, staring at the glow-in-the-dark stars I’d stuck on the ceiling. I went over everything Les had said. I imagined every detail of his face, and the way he laughed, and the way he ate, and the way he drove, and the way he looked at me and how he tasted in my mouth.

So this is love, I thought. L-O-V-E: LOVE.

The CD ended and a really old song floated into my head. After my dad escaped when I was four, me and Hilary went to live with my nan for a few years. The Spiggs threw herself into rebuilding her life, so it was Nan I spent time with. Most afternoons we’d get out her box of old records and we’d play them on her ancient record player. This song was one of my favourites because it made me feel really happy. I made Nan play it all the time. And years later they had it in that film. Lying in bed that night, I could hear it exactly the way it sounded on her old record player. Scratchy and old-fashioned.

“Just blahblah and me … and baby makes three … we’re happy in my blue heaven…”

I didn’t really understand it when I was little, but I did now. Now I knew what the singer meant.

I drifted off to sleep, softly humming my nan’s song. At last I understood what life was all about.

Love Will Set You Free

Les said I was pretty, fun to be with, and that I made him laugh. I couldn’t believe it.

“
Me
?” I’d say.

And he’d say, “Yes,
you
.”

Like me, Les had had a hard time at school. He was quiet, and teachers and other bullies picked on him a lot. Plus, though it was hard to believe
now
, he’d been fat and unpopular. So he was always shy with girls. He said he never even
thought
about girls in secondary school, all he thought about was getting out and getting a job and having a life. Also like me. He only moved out of his mother’s and down to London that summer, so though he’d been out with a few girls he’d never even had a real girlfriend. Before now.

“You kiss like you have,” I told him.

Les laughed. “Beginner’s luck.”

Les liked the way boys looked at me in the street, like they wished they were him.

“Green with envy,” he’d say as we passed a group of them. “Green with envy.” He’d give me a hug. He was really chuffed.

I’d hug him back.

I was really chuffed, too.

Les also liked that I was really feminine and into make-up and stuff. He was a musicals freak. He said I was like some song in some old musical, I enjoyed being a girl.

“I do now,” I said.

There were tons of things Les knew about – sports and cars and videos and who originally starred in
Oklahoma!
, that sort of thing – that I didn’t know much about. I loved to listen to him explain them to me. And he loved to explain them.

“You’re sure I’m not boring you?” he’d ask.

And I’d say, “Of course I’m sure.”

But even though we hung out a lot together and were always happy and kissing and stuff, Les never said the L-word. He said he wasn’t ready for a serious relationship, but I reckoned he was just shy. I mean, it was all pretty new to him. Les was a boy, so he hadn’t spent all the years I’d spent waiting to fall in love. He wasn’t prepared. I knew that it can take a man a lot longer to realize he’s in love than it does a woman. Like in
When Harry Met Sally…
Though I hoped it wouldn’t take him that long.

So I never said the L-word, either. Not that it mattered. I felt it. And I showed it. And I knew that, deep down, Les felt it too.

Besides being ecstatically happy, the beauty of being in love was that it gave me real power for the first time in my life. Because nothing else mattered. It was that simple. Nothing else mattered at all.

The Wicked Witch of NW6 could moan at me and threaten me and refuse to give me any pocket money, and it didn’t matter. I couldn’t care less. She was like a toothless, clawless lion roaring at the ringmaster. I might still be living in her flat, but in my mind and heart I was already gone.

It was the same at school. Now there really was no reason why I should worry about boring stuff like science and history. As soon as I was sixteen, I’d leave school, move in with Les and get a job. Les was bound to be a manager by then, and he’d get me something in Blockbuster until we decided it was time to have kids. Before you knew it, I was going to be decorating our flat and making dinner for our friends, not sitting in the library with my nose in a book worrying about who started a war hundreds of years ago. I mean, it wasn’t like I was going to have to list the kings and queens of England in chronological order to shop in Sainsbury’s, was it?

As usual, the preachers didn’t exactly agree with me.

“You’re bright enough,” Mrs Mela, my English teacher, informed me one afternoon, “but you just don’t seem to want to make any effort at all any more.”

That’s why Mrs Mela had made me stay behind. Because I didn’t make any effort
at all
any more. She’d caught me passing notes to my friend Amie while she was reading us
Romeo and Juliet
. Again.

Thing was, I really didn’t want to make any effort just then. I was meeting Les for tea before he went on his shift. Who wants to discuss their lack of interest in English when they’ve got a date? I stared through the window behind her, as if I was listening and thinking deeply about what she said.

Mrs Mela sighed. She sounded just like Hilary Spiggs.

“Lana,” said Mrs Mela in her user-friendly voice, “what’s going to happen to you if you keep this up? You haven’t done your homework in weeks. You disrupt the rest of the class…” She gave another heartfelt sigh. “I’m very, very concerned.”

I flashed her one of my best smiles. “There’s nothing to be concerned about,” I assured her. “I understand what you’re saying, but you’re wrong. I’m fine.”

Mrs Mela cleared her throat. “And what about your future?” she wanted to know. “What are you going to do with your life? At the rate you’re going, you’ll be lucky to pass half your GCSEs.”

Now she really sounded like my mother.

So I told her the same thing I told my mother and everybody else, so they’d shut up and leave me alone.

“I reckon I’ll become an actress. I really like drama.”

Actually, acting was the one job I thought would really suit me. You make lots of money, you go to lots of parties and you don’t need any qualifications, you just turn up for auditions. What could be easier? You don’t even have to go to acting school, if you don’t want to. Scads of famous stars were discovered just walking down the street.

“I believe the correct term is ‘actor’ for both sexes nowadays,” said Mrs Mela. “And as far as your love of drama goes, Lana, Shakespeare
is
drama, but you don’t seem to like
him
very much.”

That’s the thing I’ve always found with preachers, they twist your words to suit themselves.

“I meant like films,” I explained. “You know, like
Titanic.
Or musicals.” Musicals were starting to interest me a lot. I’d watched at least six since I met Les. “Everyone says I have a really good voice.”

“You need more than a good voice to get on in this world,” said Mrs Mela. “You need to work hard and get proper qualifications.”

Mrs Mela had two university degrees, plus a teaching degree. If I was an underachiever, she was an overachiever. Fancy going to school for twenty years just to teach English to a load of kids who’d rather be at home watching telly.

I readjusted my school bag over my shoulder. “So, is that all?” I prepared for flight. “It’s just that I have to get home. My mum’s got the flu.”

I got the feeling from the way Mrs Mela frowned at me that my mum had had the flu before. Probably recently.

“How old are you?” asked Mrs Mela. “Fifteen?”

You didn’t need a university degree to guess that, either. I was in Year Ten, wasn’t I?

I nodded.

“Fifteen’s old enough to start taking things seriously,” said Mrs Mela. She smiled hopefully. “With a little effort on your part, this year could see your attitude mature a little more.”

“I’ll try,” I lied. “I’m sure it will.”