Bright Young Things (18 page)

She touches Bryn’s chest and he wakes immediately.

‘Mum?’ he says.

Emily laughs. ‘Silly, it’s Emily.’

‘Where’s Thea?’ asks Bryn, sitting up and stretching.

‘She ran in the house a few minutes ago. She seemed to be crying.’

‘Oh.’

‘So what made her cry?’ asks Emily, taking out her box of Silk Cut.

‘Cry?’ says Bryn.

‘Do you want one of these?’

He takes a cigarette. ‘Cheers.’

‘So . . . ?’ She’s flirting.

‘What?’

‘The goss,’ she says. ‘Tell me what happened to make Thea cry.’

‘Oh, that,’ says Bryn. ‘I didn’t know she was, uh . . .’

‘So tell me what happened.’

Bryn starts telling some um-and-ah tale of him woodcutting and Thea sunbathing. There’s even a hint that there was some attraction between them – or at least from Bryn’s side anyway.

‘I thought she’d want me to kiss her,’ he explains. ‘It was one of those, you know,
moments
, when you just know that something’s going to happen. Anyway, then I told her she was gorgeous and just before I went to kiss her, I said I’d like to take some pictures of her.’

Emily starts laughing, rolling around on the grass.

‘What?’ says Bryn.

‘You total perv!’

‘I didn’t mean it like that, though, did I?’

‘You
so
did. God, men are all the same.’

Paul and Anne are still sitting in the kitchen. They don’t seem to be doing anything, just sitting staring at each other. Oh well, maybe they don’t have much to say. Emily heads straight through the door and upstairs to clean her teeth. The lemonade has left an aftertaste.

Emily’s room is next to Thea’s. And it’s a complete accident, but as Emily’s cleaning her teeth, she realises she can hear everything going on in the next room. At first it’s all sobs and shushing noises. Then some quiet, then the sound of a nose being blown, then some more quiet.

Then voices.

‘Why are you so upset?’ says Jamie, his voice muffled by the wall.

‘I hate it here,’ says Thea.

There are more sobbing sounds for a couple of minutes. Emily washes her face.

‘Come on,’ says Jamie soothingly. ‘You can talk to me.’

‘About what?’ Thea says petulantly.

‘Whatever it is that’s made you so upset.’

‘Just being here makes me upset.’

‘None of us wants to be here,’ he reminds her.

‘No? You all seem to be having fun.’

‘We’re just making the best of it,’ says Jamie.

There’s a pause. Emily lowers herself to the floor and gets comfortable.

‘I feel so stupid,’ says Thea.

Emily makes a face. Get to the point, girl.

‘Don’t,’ says Jamie. ‘This is a difficult situation.’

‘You don’t seem to find it difficult,’ she says.

‘Well, I’m a survivor,’ says Jamie.

Emily puts her fist in her mouth.
I’m a survivor
. God, he’s sweet but ridiculous.

‘I found the generator, by the way,’ says Thea.

‘Brilliant. We’ll have to power it up before it gets dark.’

There are sounds of movement. Jamie must be getting up.

‘What, now?’ says Thea.

‘Come on, you’ll feel better if you come and do something.’

‘But I can’t . . .’

‘What?’ asks Jamie.

‘I can’t face
him
.’

‘Bryn?’

‘Yes,’ she says.

‘Why? What happened out there?’

‘Nothing. It was stupid.’

‘So what’s the problem?’ asks Jamie.

‘I think I may have overreacted a bit.’

You can say that again
, thinks Emily.

‘Did he make a move on you?’ asks Jamie.

‘I don’t know. I think I wanted him to, anyway. It wasn’t that.’

‘So what’s the problem?’

‘Just something he said.’

‘What?’ Jamie asks.

‘You wouldn’t understand.’

‘You could try me.’

‘He said he wanted to take pictures of me.’

‘Oh, I see. What a bastard.’

‘No!’ protests Thea. ‘I don’t think he meant that.’

‘Well what else could he mean?’

‘He’s a photographer. He likes taking pictures of buildings and whatever. I think he thought I’d take it as a compliment. I mean, we’d both been talking about photography, so it wasn’t a completely out-of-place thing to say. That’s why I feel so bad for overreacting.’

‘So where’s the problem?’

‘What problem?’ she says.

‘Come on. You’re so upset.’

Emily wonders if this is ever going to get interesting.

‘It’s just that I can’t have my picture taken,’ Thea says. ‘Ever,’ she adds.

‘Why not?’

‘I just can’t.’

‘Aren’t there some religions that—’

‘What? Believe that a photograph takes your soul away? Well, they’re right. It does. It completely takes your soul away.’

‘I don’t understand,’ says Jamie.

There’s a long pause. Then Thea’s voice, softer now.

‘When I was twelve I found out that my uncle had hidden a camera in my bedroom.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘He used to record me getting undressed. He had hours and hours of video tape of me in my socks and knickers, or just my knickers, or completely naked. Apparently the ones of me in my socks and knickers were the most popular.’

‘Shit!’ says Jamie. ‘Are you serious?’

‘Yeah. He used to keep the videos for himself and his friends, and print off stills to sell to some specialist dealer in Soho.’

‘What, like a . . .’

‘A paedophile. Yeah.’

‘Jesus. No wonder you—’

‘He did it for two years, starting when I was ten. I found the camera when I was looking for secret passageways. You know, you do that kind of thing when you’re a kid. It took me ages to work out what it was for. When I did, my mum was pretty upset, but in the end she said there was no reason for me to take it further, because it wasn’t like he’d touched me or anything. I don’t think my dad thought it was a big deal, although I’d expected him to go mental. They didn’t want any trouble, I suppose. It was that sort of family.’

‘Gosh. What did you do?’

‘I went to the police. There was some talk at school about what to do if a grown up makes you feel uncomfortable. You know the kind of thing. I told a teacher and she took me to the police.’

‘That’s amazingly brave.’

‘When they investigated Uncle David, they found a lot of nasty stuff.’

‘What kind of nasty stuff?’

‘You don’t want to know.’

I do
, thinks Emily. But Jamie doesn’t press her.

‘What happened to him?’ he asks instead.

‘He went to prison. He’s still there, in fact.’

Emily does a quick calculation. Thea said she was twenty-two. Must have been some pretty fucked up shit if this guy’s been in prison for almost ten years.

‘What about you? What happened to you?’

‘I got fostered by these really nice people in Brighton. End of story.’

‘But what about your real folks?’

‘I haven’t spoken to them for ten years.’

‘Really?’

‘Yeah. They were trailer trash anyway. Didn’t give a shit about me.’

‘God.’

The conversation seems to be over.

‘Please don’t tell anyone what I told you,’ Thea says.

‘Of course,’ says Jamie.

There’s some shuffling, the sound of a door banging and they’re gone.

There’s sexual tension in the kitchen.

‘What are you two doing?’ asks Jamie, as he walks past with Thea.

‘Nothing,’ says Paul. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Going to sort out the electricity,’ says Jamie.

‘Are you feeling better?’ Anne asks Thea.

‘Yes thanks,’ she replies acidly.

Then they are gone. Paul goes back to looking at Anne.

He smiles. She smiles back.

‘What?’ she asks.

‘What?’ he replies.

This has been going on for the last half an hour. She’s got some book from the library which she’s reading, and he’s just looking at her, and tinkering with some other bits of phone. Every so often she looks up and smiles. He smiles back, they both get embarrassed, ask each other what, and then Anne returns to her reading.

There isn’t a word for Anne. Paul’s been trying to think of one all day. Maybe it’s because he’s never been faced with a girl like this, who makes him think these kind of thoughts. Maybe that’s why he doesn’t have the word. As far as he’s always been concerned, women fall into two general categories: the girlfriends that you rebel against – strange Bridget Jones women who just want to trap you, marry you and then get fat in comfort – and the girls you mess around with while you’re rebelling against them. He doesn’t want to have sex with any of them. He’s certainly not interested in sleeping with Bridgets. They always want the lights off, and they moan about their cellulite, the bastards who’ve used them and all the clichéd things you’ve ever heard. And the other girls, the ones who don’t even have names, they worry about all the same things, but just haven’t reached the self-esteem high of Bridget, who doesn’t have particularly high self-esteem anyway. They’ll fuck anyone, do any drugs and abuse themselves, until they eventually find a man or a religion or a self-help manual that’ll turn them into a Bridget, and then they’ll get married and fat as well.

Paul doesn’t have a problem with sex in theory, he just doesn’t want to actually put his penis inside people like
that
. It’s so false: the moans, the positions. Why do they all do that? It’s not because they enjoy it. Usually it’s because it hurts, and they enjoy that in a low self-esteem kind of way.

Anne looks up from her book.

Paul smiles. She smiles back.

‘What?’ he asks.

‘What?’ she repeats.

She goes back to the book.

He knows there are women out there who are different, but he’s never met any. It makes him angry that he only ever meets the fucked up ones. Why make love to someone who hates their body? What the hell is the point of that? Why share an intimate experience with someone you can never get close to, who is shielded by dyed hair and false, painted nails and horrible make-up that stains your pillow? Why share an experience with someone for whom that very experience is their essential hang-up? Why share an act of love with someone who’s just going to cry afterwards, or want to get married, or talk about all the pain in their life? That’s why Paul thinks that sex must really hurt for these women; they always end up in so much
pain
afterwards.

This is why he doesn’t have sex. He is never going to have children, never going to have a ‘partner’. He can watch other people do all that stuff, but he can’t do it himself. The only woman he’s ever been in love with was a character in a videogame: Aeris. And now she’s in the Life Stream. Paul’s interested in various things: dada; the number 23 (Anne’s twenty-three, he heard her telling Emily); games; communication networks; animals; the environment. But so far he’s never been interested in love, because, honestly, it just hasn’t seemed that relevant.

He’s tinkering with a resistor and a small LED bulb as he thinks, making a miniature circuit. Anne looks up from what she’s reading. She smiles at him. This time she holds his gaze a bit longer than usual.

‘Paul,’ she begins.

The kitchen door opens and Emily walks in.

‘What are you two doing?’ she asks.

‘It’s funny,’ says Anne. ‘Jamie asked us the exact same thing, but it’s quite obvious that I’m reading and Paul’s building a plane to get us out of here.’

Paul smiles at Anne.

‘Calm down,’ says Emily. ‘I didn’t suggest you were having sex or anything.’

Anne goes pink. Paul feels himself get a little hot.

‘You’re both going red,’ says Emily. ‘Kinky.’

‘Shut up,’ says Paul.

‘Coffee?’ asks Emily, fiddling with the kettle.

‘Whatever,’ says Paul.

‘Yuck,’ says Anne. ‘I’ll have some milkshake.’

‘Where’s Bryn?’ asks Emily.

‘Don’t know,’ says Anne. ‘Still outside, I think.’

‘Jamie and Thea have gone to—’ begins Paul. At that moment things start to whir and the kitchen light comes on.

‘—sort out the electricity,’ finishes Anne.

‘Cool,’ says Emily. She finishes making the coffee on the electric stove.

‘Thanks,’ says Paul, when she gives it to him.

Emily sits down, looking thoughtful. No one says anything.