Eleven New Ghost Stories (23 page)

I think Mum was probably tired
of it too, but my father wasn’t one for change. Like all truly
stubborn people, he’d dig his heels in for no good reason and
refuse to accept change. That’s why they divorced in the end. He
became so inflexible that he wasn’t just stuck in a rut, he was
lost in one.

We were good friends with the
hotel staff by this time and Lily’s grandmother and I always seemed
to get on. She was annoyed that Lily had been so mean to me; I
don’t think she liked Lily’s new crowd very much, but I suppose it
was understandable that parents might get a bit concerned when you
start listening to Nirvana and Happy Mondays and start dressing
like you don’t wash any more.

By then she was becoming more of
a parent to Lily; her father was drinking more and more. The
business was struggling and his alcoholism was getting worse and
his behaviour was rubbing guests up the wrong way, my dad
included.

But Lily’s grandmother, I think
she must have told her off, because on that last night we were
there, she invited me to go the cinema with her. I think she
probably planned to go anyway, there were a bunch of her other
friends there, she was probably just being charitable.

We went to see Robin Hood,
Prince of Thieves, even though none of them seemed bothered about
seeing it – generation X types, everything was so ‘lame’. They were
all older than us too, I hadn’t noticed before, but this gang of
hers were a few years ahead.

I can’t stand to watch that
movie now, but at the time I thought it was pretty cool. The guys
we went with spent most of the time sniggering about it and making
jokes, annoying everyone in the auditorium. I was more annoyed by
the spikey-hair guy’s arms around Lily. It was hard to follow the
film and I wished I’d stayed at the hotel.

Most of the gang snuck out more
than half way through, leaving me with Lily and spikey. Then, just
as the film was reaching the end, they too snuck down to the fire
exit at the bottom of the auditorium and bolted. They’d ditched me
as well.

I stayed until the end and then
moped my way out of there. Hurt and feeling betrayed, I planned in
my head how I would say to my parents that we should stop coming to
Morecambe, that it was a miserable and boring place and we should
find somewhere else to go on our holidays.

But no sooner had I walked a few
feet from the front entrance did I hear Lily’s voice again. She
shouted my name, or at least, she’d tried to. It had been cut off –
she’d been stopped from shouting, abruptly. I turned my head and
swore I saw someone disappear from view, hiding behind a wall, just
down a driveway leading behind the cinema.

The drive led to a small car
park for employees and deliveries. I knew I hadn’t imagined hearing
her, and although it was raining, I could hear movement; the scrape
of heels on the ground.

I started off slowly, but ran as
I realised there was a struggle going on. Just as I turned the
corner, I spotted them tucked behind a metal skip bin, next to the
ramp to the fire escape. I saw spikey-hair, pinning Lily to the
wall with one hand clamped over her mouth and the other stopping
her body from sliding from under his, telling her to be quiet.

He saw me and was about to tell
me to back off. But before he did, I did something, to this day, I
can’t imagine myself doing: I went right up to him and lamped him
one, right in the chops. I think he was as surprised as I was – he
fell back and landed against the ramp railing. I didn’t know what
to do then, but I only paused for a second before I decided the
safest thing to do was kick him in the balls and leg it.

Her top was undone and her bra
was unfastened. After we’d run down the street and around a corner,
we stopped to get her properly dressed. She was cold and shivering
– she’d left her coat there, behind the theatre. Neither of us
wanted to go back for it. She cried. I put her head on my shoulder
and held it there for as long as she wanted. I gave her my coat and
took being soaked on the way home like a gentleman.

We walked back home along the
seafront, just like the old days. Only this time she wasn’t quiet
because she was in her own world, it was because she didn’t want to
talk about what had just happened. I didn’t know what to say
either, so we walked back in silence.

We got back to the hotel and I
asked her if she was going to be ok. She nodded and thanked me for
lending her my coat, which she gave back to me. After another
awkward moment of quiet, she asked if I was going tomorrow. I said
yes and then she said goodbye and that she would see me again next
year probably.

We waved sheepishly to each
other and parted. It felt like we should’ve hugged or said
something more meaningful, but neither of us could think of
anything to say. But as I turned to walk away, I heard her call my
name again. I turned back and suddenly she was there in front of
me.

She kissed me.

My first kiss.

I don’t want to get cheesy but
it was… it was like moving to Technicolor. I felt like I drifted
inches up off the floor and didn’t come down again for about an
hour. She didn’t even say a word; she just kissed me and went
swiftly through the door to her room.

As we packed to leave that year
all I wanted to do was stay. Lily didn’t seem to be around that
morning and I was so desperate to find her and say how much I
didn’t want to go. But my father wasn’t going to let me interrupt
his schedule and I couldn’t let him know how desperate I was for us
to stay longer because of youthful embarrassment.

We packed up, paid and left. But
just as we were leaving, I got one final glimpse. She was there,
climbing the steps to the hotel with some shopping.

She waved to us as we left and I
waved back. I carried that image with me for a hundred miles home
with a tear in my eye. The thought that I wouldn’t see her now for
a whole 12 months hurt so bad; it dug right into my soul and made
my chest ache. But what could I do?

She was forever on my mind for
the rest of the summer and into the new school term. I wanted her.
I wanted her to be mine.

But how could I do it? I
wouldn’t see her again for a year, how could I stop someone else
from making a move on her during that time? What if spikey-hair
apologised and weaselled his way back into her heart? I didn’t
think she was that foolish, but who knew? I sometimes wondered if I
really knew her at all. I only saw her for two weeks a year.

I decided after much fretting
and worrying that I would write to her. It took weeks; I had to
pluck up the courage to do it and then I had to decide what to
write. Then it took weeks to write it, draft, redraft, tear up,
throw away, start again… it was months before I had something ready
to post, but I didn’t want my parents to know, so it took me ages
to find the address of the hotel. There was no internet then; I had
to do my research and visit the library to find a listing and
address for the hotel. It was almost the end of October by the time
I finally posted the letter.

I’m not even sure what I put in
the letter – something probably cringe-worthy about longing and
wanting to see her every day. I didn’t want to put her off by going
too far, but I tried in a clumsy way to tell her just how much I
loved her and how I hated that it would be so many months before I
would see her again. Most importantly, I wanted to know how she
felt about me and whether she cared and thought about me as I
thought about her.

I almost chickened out before I
sent it; I was so afraid of rejection. I had forgotten how
dismissive she had been of me during those two weeks. How she’d
been part of a new crowd that would look down on someone as
terribly unfashionable and gawky as me.

Weeks passed, then months.
Getting an answer was frightening enough, getting no answer was
worse. By the time Christmas approached, the chance of getting a
response looked bleak and I had already resigned myself to the fact
that we would never be together.

My parents’ marriage was falling
apart; they were barely on speaking terms. Normally my aunt and
uncle and cousins would come over and we’d spend Christmas
together. But my cousin Aaron had already suggested that they might
stay away that year; that my parents’ arguments had already almost
spoilt it last year. There would have to be a reckoning between
them before the big day. I made myself almost sick with worry not
knowing when the explosion might come.

And then the letter came. It was
just as school was breaking up and I was still wary about what
might happen at Christmas…

I wish I still had that letter.
It was just… I was so unhappy and so low and it was exactly what I
needed. It brought me comfort and hope and a glimmer of
happiness.

Lily thanked me for writing to
her; she was happy to receive my letter which had ‘shone some light
on a dark time’. Her handwriting was so beautiful, so elegant, it
practically danced across the page. I’d never realised she was such
a gifted writer. It was as if for the first time we were really
talking. All the awkwardness, the half-gazes, the things unsaid
during those brief visits… suddenly we were communicating honestly,
fully, completely…

Though the letter gave me hope,
it was far from happy reading. Her father had become worse: he was
drinking far too much and now he had suffered from a small stroke,
followed by a serious fall down some stairs, breaking his leg.

He’d spent many weeks in
hospital and she had worried that he might die. She had already
lost her mother and was terrified of losing him too. He was home
now, but needed constant care as he was still out of sorts and not
fit to run the hotel. She was having to help out more and was
struggling with her schoolwork but was managing to get through as
the hotel was not busy. But this too was a problem; her gran and
cousins were afraid because they just weren’t getting enough guests
on season to cope with the quiet off-season.

After going through all her
problems, she finally came to my letter and to my utter excitement
said she often thought of me too. She was sorry for how she had
been when I last visited. She had been fighting with her father and
had tried to make new friends and tried to be like them, but
realised that it was a mistake and that she would never really fit
in with them.

She was sorry she had been cruel
to me because, really, we were more alike than she was with any of
them. And that, in fact, was one of the things she liked best about
me; that she could just be herself and didn’t need to worry about
what anyone else would think.

She was sorry that we couldn’t
see each other more often, but now, more than ever, she had little
time to herself, having to look after the hotel and do her
coursework. We were both heading towards GCSEs and the pressure was
on.

She said she would look forward
to me writing again and I duly started on a new letter that very
night. We became confidants for each other. Each revealing our true
and honest thoughts through our letters. I wrote of my worries
about my parents, how they were, apparently, starting afresh,
giving their marriage one last chance and my doubts that they could
ever really change things, my dad especially.

She wrote of her father’s
loneliness and his struggle with drinking. She thought he had never
gotten over her mother’s death and that he blamed himself for it,
and that had stopped him from ever remarrying. Now his business was
failing, she worried too he might sink deeper into depression,
because of the years he’d put into the hotel. That summer would be
decisive, if it did not make money it would not, in her opinion,
survive another year.

We wrote to each other every
month. By Easter a great plot had been hatched: our exams were
around the corner, but after that we would have months before we
had to start college. What if I were to come to Morecambe to work
for her father at the hotel? We could spend the whole summer
together. I could live there at the hotel, get paid a small amount,
as they couldn’t afford much; it would help her father and most
importantly, we could be together.

I floated the idea to my parents
and they said yes. As long as I revised hard, they were all for it.
Her father gave the go ahead too – although I bet he needed some
convincing.

So I revised hard and did my
best. My parents were on their best behaviour, for my benefit,
although you don’t need raised voices to be affected by that kind
of tension.

I couldn’t wait to get away. And
within a few days of my last exam ending, I was on a bus up to
Morecambe. My parents were going to join me mid-August, as was our
tradition now that potters’ holidays were no longer observed.

I worried a great deal on the
way there, self-conscious and nervous as always. I knew her now
better than I’d ever known her. But still, seeing somebody for only
a few weeks every year made it difficult. Everything had changed so
much; we weren’t just occasional friends any more. We were
something more. Both almost 16 now; there was pressure and my mind
was not unexpectedly on sex, although that still seemed like a
far-off possibility.

My friends at school, what few
of them there were, had spent the last few school weeks joking
about it, teasing me about it. I had tried not to listen but I had
high hopes and expectations, naturally. But I was more nervous than
anything, and the fact that both of us were young for our school
year – both with our birthdays in mid-to-late August – meant that I
needn’t worry until the legal age had been reached. I didn’t think
either of us wanted to break the law. I had most of the summer to
work myself into her affections and make us both ready.

For the second year running she
was not there at the sea front, staring out to the sea. She was a
little closer to home, cleaning some of the patio furniture on the
hotel terrace. It was just a long-lingering hug when I got there.
No kiss, but I wasn’t disappointed. The smell of her and the warmth
of her smile and the sweet timbre of her voice was enough.