Growing Up Twice (2 page)

‘OK, lightweight,’ they chorus and walk away arm in arm and, as always, laughing.

I lie back on the grass and look at the sky through the lenses of my shades. I have always been in love with summer, not in the sun-worshipping sense as my pasty freckle-prone complexion will attest, but in the sense that I love sunlight. As a child I wrote rigorously rhymed poetry about golden streams of summer chasing through the leaves and making the shadows dance. Looking into the cloudless sky as it bends over my head, full of city echoes, I get a non-specific kind of nostalgia. A vague wistful feeling I can’t put my finger on.

The rest of the congregation on the benches and the grass is made up of a curiously harmonic mix of winos;
Guardian
readers; retro-grunge teens drinking from cans, smoking roll-ups and laughing ostentatiously; and about six near-identical couples with croissants and fully interactive sets of tongues. A gay couple lie side by side not far from me, silent and hand in hand. Looking at them I remember the touch of warm skin.

‘Are you OK?’ I ask myself. I’ve got that star-crossed feeling again, an intuition that fate is about to make a delivery. My skin is tingling, and my temples are beginning to throb. It seems that very soon the hangover will arrive in earnest. I stay absolutely still, feeling drowsiness seeping through my veins and enjoying it; it is a badge of honour; combat colours to prove I’m still kicking and breathing. The star-crossed feeling is probably just a toxin overload; I
must
stop thinking I’m so mystic.

‘Hey erm, hello, Jenny? Remember me?’ I have a visitor. I inspect him from behind my shades; it’s a ginger teenager from the retro-grunge gang in the corner. It’s a bit early for beery breath in my face.

‘You’re a ginger teenager,’ I tell him, as if he needs no further reason to leave. But he only laughs.

‘Yes, that’s it, you do remember me, I was at the party you and your mate had in Ladbroke Grove. We were well hard core, the last to go in the morning, remember?’ His smile stretches from ear to ear.

Suddenly I recognise his air of false bravado and I do remember. That had been
the
party. The one good party you throw in your whole life when everyone you invited comes and everyone you didn’t comes too. We had a DJ and a mirror ball and every inch of the carpet caught it.

I met a Spanish truck driver in the kitchen, some Dutch tourists on the stairs and this couple of kids, probably just about sixteen, on their first ever E. One of them had danced like a puppy all night and the other one had passed out after twenty minutes only to wake up in the morning with just his mate, Rosie and me left. This was the kid right here. We had never called him by his name, only ‘ginger teenager boy’. They had had cups of tea and we pleased them by laughing at their jokes until one of them remembered that he would be late for Sunday lunch at home. They’d gone as quickly as they had appeared, a charming juvenile mystery.

We discovered that they had left us their two telephone numbers, one of our names bracketed beside each, expressing a preference. We had laughed even more and binned them. The ginger kid had written my name next to his number and here he was again. A little bit older but no nearer any real facial hair, apparently.

‘How are you? Still living in that flat? That party was well cool, man.’ He smiles and flops on to the ground next to me. ‘New trainers? We went to see Slipknot last night, they are
sick
puppies! Do you like them? I’ve got an imported CD with two previously unheard tracks.’ He produces the aforementioned item like a child at Show and Tell and hands it to me for approval. All of their tracks are previously unheard by me.

‘Very nice,’ I say, without looking at it, and drop it on the grass. ‘What can I do for you?’ I sit up now and feel the blood drumming in my head. I feel older even than I am, my eyes are aching.

‘We’re going for some breakfast. I thought, you know, as your mates have gone you might like to come with us.’ I look at him and try to remember his name; he’s a pretty boy really. His hair is short and spiky and he has a sweet smile and brown eyes, the true best friend of the much-beleaguered ginger person. I wonder what his agenda is.

‘Look, I’ve forgotten your name.’ I’m being downright rude and still he sits there with a soppy grin on his face, looking pleased as punch.

‘That’s cool. It’s Michael, Mike. So, do you fancy breakfast with us?’ He gestures at his mates across the grass. Two other boys, one with the sides of his head shaved and some attempt at dreads; one with a scrawny pony-tail, both messing about with a box of matches; and a girl, slim and fair, sitting with her knees drawn up beneath her tassel-trimmed skirt, looking right at us. I make the deduction.

‘Is that your girlfriend?’ I ask sweetly with my best and first smile for him.

‘Yeah, she won’t mind, I told her we’re mates.’ He sends a little wave to her over the grass, she sends him a little scowl back.

I ignore the world’s most ill-advised assumption and say, ‘OK, I’ll come for a coffee.’ He doesn’t hide the look of surprise on his face as I hold out my hand for him to help me to my feet. And neither can he stop himself from flinching in surprise when I swing my arm over his shoulder as we stroll over to the café. The second sign of thunder rolls over the nameless girl’s face.

There is just something about the opportunity to minx a much younger, thinner woman that overrides all of my tenuous, subjective and flexible notions of loyalty to the greater good of the sisterhood. I’m not proud of it, but to be honest I’m thinking about the story I can tell the others when I get to the pub; I am writing them a joke. I always used to say I wouldn’t become a jealous-old-harridan type, the type that used to snub, bitch and bully me during
my
thin and pert period. But … oh well. I expect it’s evolution.

In the café, one of those shabby genteel affairs, a mixture of Formica tabletops and gold baroque-style mirrors, the kids look quiet and nervous. They probably think I am from the same generation as their mother and the realisation give me pins and needles. Thank God it’s not possible. I wonder if I can work that fact into the conversation, just to make it absolutely clear.

Michael introduces the boys first – Jake and Andy.

‘And this is my girlfriend.’

‘
Sarah
,’ she says and gives him a ‘I-do-have-a-name-you-know’ look. I like her, she’s feisty.

The coffee comes and just the smell of it makes my stomach lurch. Michael is looking at me a lot and I like it. Sarah is looking at me a lot and I like it. Jake and Andy are trying to catch the coasters they are flipping from the table edge – well, it keeps them occupied.

‘So what are you up to these days?’ I ask Michael. I talk just to him, and lean a little bit closer; he smells of grass. He gives me a wide and disarming smile. I bet he gave that smile to Sarah across the playground before they got together. His eyelashes are dark at the root and curve up to golden tips. I begin to see why Sarah is so possessive.

‘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.

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.