Lovestruck (13 page)

‘You
two are just spoiled,’ she added for good measure, as finally the lights dimmed. Suddenly Rosie shivered. What was she doing here? How had she made it from that tiny flat in St Pauls to this? She was very lucky. She needed to appreciate it more.

They were in Christy’s bedroom, lying on the floor, heads propped up on pink cushions. Next to them was a plate of digestives. Christy always got them out for Rosie from Nick’s biscuit tin. Sandra and Christy didn’t touch them – but in case they were ever tempted Sandra had stuck a Post-it to the lid proclaiming the calorie count: seventy-one!

But Rosie could eat as many as she liked without putting on an ounce, and right now she was doing exactly that. Nanna had forgotten to give her lunch money again and she resented using her paper-round wages, which were reserved for treats like clothes from Miss Selfridge, so she’d gone hungry again. On the CD, The Shamen were playing.

‘OK, stop, stop!’ Rosie waved her biro in the air.

Christy pressed pause and dictated the lyrics.

Rosie confirmed them gravely, scribbling on a piece of paper supported by Christy’s defaced GCSE set text of
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
. They were determined to produce the definitive transcription of the lyrics. ‘No wonder the BBC banned it.’

‘We
should suggest singing it in the school concert to Mr Ashdown,’ Christy said dryly.

Shrieks. ‘Can you imagine the parents’ faces?!’

‘Do you remember that time Mr Ashdown had us singing “I Am a Gay Musician”?’ Christy snorted.

‘What was he thinking of,’ Rosie giggled, ‘teaching that song to a class of fourteen-year-old girls?’ She spoke as if fourteen-year-girls were babies, rather than a mere two years younger than them, the sophisticated sixteen-year-olds.

‘And assembly. Having us sing about purple-headed mountains.’

‘ “All things bright and beautiful”,’ Christy trilled, then suddenly stopped at the noise of more yelling downstairs.

‘
He is not going to live in my house
. I’ve told you, not in a million years.’

‘Sandy, he’s our
son
.’

‘He is not my son any longer. He is a freak.’

A door slammed.

‘Oh fuck,’ said Christy. She almost never used words like that.

‘Barron?’

After the row at Christmas Barron had been packed off to Australia, but now he was due home again.

‘Mum has this stupid idea that if she keeps sending him away, he’s going to change his mind,’ Christy sighed. ‘But he won’t. It’s something he has to do.
He’s told me he feels like he’s a prisoner, trapped in the wrong body.’

She sighed again. Christy so rarely let go of her guard, but right now she looked exhausted and utterly crestfallen.

‘Mum won’t have him living here, but where else can he go? He failed all his A levels, and no one would give him a job anyway because he looks so weird. He’s not good at anything. He’s going to have to go on the dole and get a council flat.’ She saw Rosie’s expression. ‘I mean, not that there’s anything wrong with that but … you know.’

‘I know.’

‘Dad wants to support him, but Mum says they have to wipe their hands of him until he comes to his senses. But he can’t. He won’t.’

At home that night, there were other troubles. While Rosie and Christy had been listening to The Shamen, Marianne had been announcing to her mother that she was moving in with her new boyfriend in Weston-super-Mare. Arguments about this had been rumbling for a while, with Nanna pointing out that she needed Marianne’s housekeeping contributions from her current job as a barmaid at the bingo hall to keep afloat.

‘You’ll have a spare room,’ she was telling Nanna, as Rosie walked through the door. ‘Take in a lodger.’

‘I don’t want a stranger in my house. And who the hell would want to lodge here anyway?’ Nanna lit a
Rothmans. ‘You’re so selfish, Marianne!’ she exclaimed as she exhaled. ‘It’ll be over with this Ricky within a month and then you’ll be begging to come back. It’s not like it’s the sodding first time.’

Rosie tried to move unobtrusively past them – impossible in a kitchen the size of a bathtub – and into her bedroom, where she could tackle her maths homework. But then an idea struck her and she swivelled round. ‘I’ve thought of something!’

‘Always was the brainbox,’ Marianne muttered sourly. ‘Mind you, things could have been very different for me, if I’d not made the mistake of having you. I could have stayed on at school.’

Rosie ignored her. She was far too familiar with such outbursts. ‘Remember Barron, Nanna?’ she said.

‘The gay boy?’ Marianne lit her own cigarette.

Rosie fanned away the smoke. ‘He’s not gay. Just … diffrent.’

‘Such a nice boy,’ Nanna purred.

‘He is, isn’t he? And I think he might need a place to live. At least for a while. So he could move into mum’s room!’

And so it was that Barron ended up living with them. Nick paid a small rent and Barron helped Nanna with her shopping and chores while he searched fruitlessly for a job. He also made regular visits to the doctor.

‘What exactly is it you’re hoping for, Barron?’ Nanna asked, that first evening over a tea of pie and chips.
Rosie cringed, but it was never in Nanna’s nature to beat around the bush.

‘Well,’ Barron said, clearing his throat. He must have been about sixteen stone at this stage, with a huge beer belly that hung round his gut like a lifebelt. People crossed the road if they saw him walking down the street at night, but he was the gentlest man imaginable. ‘The doctor’s giving me hormones.’

‘Hormones?’

‘That’s right. I don’t want to be a man any more, you see. It’s the first step to turning me into a woman.’

‘Ah.’ Nanna got up, took her handbag from its peg behind the front door and removed the Rothmans pack. She lit up. She inhaled. She appeared to be examining what barron had just said carefully, like a piece of steak on special at Iceland.

‘What else do you have to do then?’

‘Well,’ Barron said. ‘I also have to live like a woman for a year. To prove I really, really want this. Because obviously once they do the operation –’ Christy flinched at the mere mention of this – ‘there’s no turning back.’

‘I’ll say!’ exclaimed Nanna, almost choking.

‘So you’re going to live as a woman?’ Rosie asked. She’d be lying to claim she wasn’t horribly embarrassed at the prospect. The neighbours would point and nudge each other even more than they had already.

‘I don’t know,’ Barron lisped, wiping thick gravy from his even thicker lips. ‘I don’t know. Because the thing is I asked, “What do you mean live like a woman?”
And he said: “You know, wear a dress when you walk round Tesco’s.” And I said: “I won’t wear a dress. I don’t believe in all that. I’m a feminist.” ’

There was a second’s pause and then Nanna snorted with laughter. As she began to bellow, so did Rosie. Then Barron started. It was infectious; they giggled and giggled, wiping tears from their cheeks, pushing away their half-eaten pies and clutching their aching sides.

‘You’re a feminist!’ Nanna shrieked.

‘I am. I’m bloody Emmeline Pankhurst.’

‘I don’t think I’ve had such a good laugh since I seen
Life of Brian
, lover,’ Nanna told him when they’d all – sort of – calmed down. ‘You can stay with me for life.’

So Barron started taking the hormones. But the stand-off over his feminism remained. He refused to wear dresses, so the therapist refused to refer him for an NHS operation.

‘She says it’s such a serious operation, she can’t possibly do it unless she knows one hundred per cent I’m serious. But I am,’ Barron wailed. ‘I just have principles.’

‘Can’t you bend them principles a bit, lover?’ Nanna asked. Much as she and Rosie adored Barron’s unfailing good nature, his handiness with a duster and the funny little tunes he warbled in the shower, they were getting rather tired of this circular argument. ‘Compromise, my ducks. Just wear a dress out and about in public a bit and then you’ll get your op.’

‘It
wouldn’t be being true to who I am,’ Barron objected. ‘That’s the whole point. I’ve struggled for so long to be true to me; if I back down on this, I might as well throw in the towel.’

It was frustrating but Rosie kind of admired him. And she loved having Barron living with them, he was so much sunnier to have around the house than Mum with her constant moodiness, forever falling in and out of love and refusing to help Nanna with the housework – ‘Because I’ve just had my heart broken, can’t you see?’ It also meant that, for the first time since they were eleven, Christy was a visitor to the flat, coming over at least twice a week. It hadn’t seemed it at the time, with exams looming and Rosie nursing an unrequited crush on Pete Langridge who was in a joint-school drama production of
Guys and Dolls
and Nanna blowing her top about enormous phone bills, but looking back at how close she and Christy had been, without careers or children getting in the way, it had been one of the best chunks of her life.

‘So?’ whispered Christy as, after what seemed like centuries, the credits rolled and the audience broke into rapturous applause.

‘
Scheisse
,’ Rosie replied, as they shuffled in the dark out into the aisle.

Christy picked up on the reference instantly. ‘I know,
merde
.’

‘
Poshel na khui, suka, blyad!
’ They both giggled uproariously.

‘What did you think?’ Rosie asked Jake.

‘Brilliant. Work of genius,’ he said loudly. He lowered his voice. ‘When I went to that Gillian Anderson film I loudly told Rosalba how crap it was and Gillian’s mum was sitting behind me and went mental … Rhiannon! Hey, sweets. Loved it! Brilliant. Well done, darling.’

‘Did you like it?’ asked Rhiannon, with justified suspicion. She was about Rosie’s age, in a silver trouser suit. Maybe Rosie needed a silver trouser suit to complete her life.

‘Darling,’ replied Jake enigmatically. He turned to
Rosie. ‘This is Rhiannon Barnes. She cast the film. Brilliantly. For
Disney
. This is my wife, Rosie.’

‘Hello.’ Rhiannon glanced at Rosie as if she’d been asked to calculate her VAT. Then she straightened Jake’s collar, smiling up at him. ‘So are you coming to the party?’

‘Course. Though why does it have to be in freaking Camden?’

‘I know. When will they realize we’d be happier in the Hippodrome, so we could just walk across Leicester Square, show our faces and be done with it?’

Complaining again
, Rosie thought. While talking, they’d left the building via a side door and emerged into the chilly night air of Leicester Square. Rosie shivered and hugged her thin jacket close.
How do the stars cope with all that posing in their skimpy frocks
? She giggled at such a Nanna-like thought.

‘The car’s waiting round the corner to take us to the party,’ Jake said, putting his arm round her. In her ear, he whispered. ‘Rhiannon is such a cunt.’ Rosie stifled a laugh.

Fifteen minutes later, Rosie, Christy and Jake entered the gigantic space of the Roundhouse, which was decked out as an Aladdin’s cave of wonders. Dry ice floated through the air, enormous latticed lanterns hung from the ceiling and veiled nymphettes in belly-dancer costumes waved plates of what look like oysters studded with pomegranates under their noses.

‘Wow.
This must have cost thousands.’

‘Worth it in terms of publicity,’ Christy said sagely, grabbing a glass of something purple from a tray. ‘Hey, have one of these, I think it’s a pomegranate Martini.’

‘Ooh, yeah. Maybe take two?’

Christy laughed. ‘Calm down, love. Don’t behave like a competition winner.’

‘But I feel like one. This is brilliant!’

The three of them clinked glasses. ‘Hooray for Rosie being here!’ Christy cried, beaming.

‘I agree,’ said Jake.

‘Excuse me,’ said a woman – about twenty, tight hot-pink dress, reddish curls piled high on top of her head. ‘Can I have a picture please?’ She handed her phone to Rosie and draped her arms round Jake’s neck.

‘Uh, sure.’

Rosie peered at the phone. She wasn’t too good with these. She clicked what she hoped was the right button.

‘Oh God, I don’t believe this,’ gasped the woman, slumping against Jake. ‘I think I’m going to faint.’

‘Are you OK?’ Rosie gasped. She turned to Christy. ‘Quick! Get some help.’

‘ ’S all right.’ The woman straightened up and snatched her phone from Rosie. ‘Thanks.’ She headed off into the crowd.

‘Well,’ Rosie said. It was as if Jake were no longer her husband, but public property that she shared with the world. Jake shrugged as a crowd of people suddenly
swarmed around him, including Simon the play’s director, who was balding, a bit tubby and a good six inches shorter than Brunhilde von Fournigan, who in person looked less like a supermodel and more like a rather bored alien.

Jake introduced them to Rosie, but they both looked bemused at the very sight of her, and instantly backed away. Rosie found herself being pushed further and further away from Jake, who made no sign of coming to her rescue. After a few moments, she decided she’d had enough. She wandered off to gaze at the dance floor, where a few people were making unimpressive shapes to CeeLo Green. She turned to Christy.

‘Come on!’

‘I can’t dance!’ She looked horrified. ‘A client might see me.’

‘Chris! This isn’t you talking.’ Rosie snatched her empty glass and placed it on a table, then grabbed two more from a passing man in purple harem pants and a bare chest.

‘C’mon, Chris. Down in one.’

‘Coming from you, Mrs Oh-No-I’ll-Have-to-Get-Up-for-the-Kids.’ But there was a sudden glint in Christy’s eye that Rosie hadn’t seen for years.

‘If you can shake off your inhibitions, I can too.’ Rosie nudged Dame Maggie Smith with her hip as she headed determinedly towards the dance floor. ‘C’mon. Dare ya.’

An
hour later, Rosie was drenched and sweaty, barefoot, having long lost her shoes. Jake tapped her on the shoulder.

‘Bean, it’s time we made a move. It’s nearly midnight.’

‘Not yet,’ she yelled over the pounding beat. ‘Come and dance with me.’

She reached for him, but he stepped backwards, hands raised, as if fending off an angry bull. ‘Absolutely no way!’

‘Aaah. C’mon.’ Jake usually loved to strut his stuff, though he was no Anton Du Beke.

‘Bean, no. Someone will film me on their phone and put it on YouTube. It’s time to go.’

‘I’m not finished yet,’ she protested, just as the first bars of ‘Single Ladies’ struck up. ‘C’mon!’

Jake took another step back. Christy stepped in between them.

‘You go home,’ she instructed Jake. ‘Rosie and I will stay on. Girls’ night, eh, Rosie?’

‘Yeah!’ Rosie shook a fist in the air. ‘Put your hands up!’

Jake looked troubled. ‘How will you get home … ? I can’t keep the car waiting all night for you.’

‘On a night bus!’ shrieked Rosie. ‘Never used to bother me.’

‘I’ll put her in a cab,’ said Christy. ‘Now off you toddle.’

‘Are you sure about this?’

‘Go!’
Christy ordained. Jake obediently slunk off into the crowd.

Two hours later, exhausted-looking bouncers having begged them to leave the party so they could go home, Rosie was on the dance floor of a nightclub off the King’s Road dancing to ‘Where Is the Love?’. And a top-notch effort she was making, though she said it herself. Basically, if Fergie retired she could step in tomorrow, no problem. And here was her own personal will.i.am replacement in the form of a Brazilian transvestite called Georgia.

‘My son’s called George,’ she informed him, as he twirled her under his arm. ‘And my best friend’s sister is a transsexual. Who’s over there. Not the transsexual, the friend. Is that what you want? To be a transsexual? Or do they say transgender now? Are you gonna have the op?’

‘
O que?
’

‘Nothing,’ Rosie yelled, waving her arms in the air as if it were still the nineties.

A new tune came on. She had no idea what she was dancing to, all her knowledge of popular music had vanished exactly three years, nine months and six days ago when Toby had emerged from her butchered nether regions.

She grabbed a random water glass on the table beside her and took a huge gulp. The hangover that had been bubbling under for the past ten minutes or so was threatening to surface, but she didn’t want the night to
end yet. It was so great to have turned the tables, to be the one out having fun, the one who was going to crawl in, wasted, as dawn broke.

‘Thank you!’ she screamed at Christy, who had reappeared from the loos and was gyrating beside her.

‘Just think!’ Christy shouted. ‘If you move to LA, you could really enjoy the party lifestyle.’

Suddenly the noise was now officially too loud and strange, the lights too bright, the people too weird – and young. Didn’t they have homes to go to?

‘You know I don’t want to go to LA,’ she hissed.

‘It would set you up for life.’ Christy took a step back, as if preparing herself for a nuclear explosion. ‘Just saying,’ she added lightly. ‘Of course it’s up to you and Jake.’

‘It would set you up too,’ Rosie snapped, plonking herself down on a shabby leather banquette.

‘I’m fine the way I am,’ Christy said, sitting beside her. ‘I’m thinking of you.’

‘I’m fine the way I am too. It’s about Nanna.’ Oh God, Nanna. She pulled her phone out of her bag. She still hadn’t returned her call. Well, now wasn’t the time to chase her up. Rosie stood unsteadily. She was going to have huge blisters tomorrow. ‘Let’s get going. The sun must be up.’

‘Want to stay at mine?’ Christy asked. ‘It’s just round the corner. It would be like old times.’

‘I have to get the boys up in the morning.’

‘Jake can bloody do that.’

Rosie was tempted. She had a flashback to the old
days, when they’d shared that flat in Chelsea before Christy had bought it for a song from the landlord and she’d moved in with horrible Adam. Giggling late into the night, listening to Radiohead, watching
ER
. ‘I could come back to yours for a coffee and then get a taxi home.’

‘Will you?’ Christy looked thrilled.

Since the time they’d both lived there, Christy’s block had changed beyond recognition. Then it was a crumbling sixties monstrosity, now – thanks to huge investment by the developer who’d bought the freehold – it had been re-coated in gleaming steel. The lobby, once a bleak concrete space, was now carpeted and modern art (replicas from Ikea but anyway) hung from the walls. The lifts that used to stink of piss and broke down were shiny and swift, the corridors dimly lit with David-Allen-Robertson-style fittings.

‘You were so clever to buy this place.’

‘I know. It’s worth a bomb now. It’ll be my pension.’

Inside, the walls that used to be covered in lurid seascapes from the landlady’s native Cyprus had been painted an austere dark grey. The furniture was all modern Danish – sourced painstakingly from auction houses – the books were alphabetized on the shelves in the corridor, and the bed was always neatly made as soon as Christy got up in the morning. In the kitchen, all stainless steel and exposed pipes, a single mug sat washed up next to the empty sink.

‘It’s amazing,’ Rosie marvelled. ‘You go out and you
come back and everything is exactly the same as you left it, because no sticky fingers have been throwing things all over the floor.’

Christy snorted, as if Rosie were joking. ‘Coffee? Or a nightcap?’

‘Nightcap,’ Rosie decided. Christy opened a cupboard and selected a bottle of Bailey’s. Unlike the bottle of Bailey’s in Rosie’s house, it wasn’t seventeen years old and covered in a thick layer of dust,
and
she had two gleaming shot glasses to hand.

‘You regularly serve guests tumblers of Baileys, rather than just buy it on a whim in Ibiza duty free and never touch it again?’

‘Our achievements are all relative,’ said Christy, as they clinked the tiny tumblers. ‘You’ve given birth.’

‘Do you want to give birth, Chris?’ Rosie asked cautiously. Normally they avoided this subject like a drunk in the street. Christy had never treated Rosie in quite the same way since the boys were born, and Rosie could never work out if it was because she wanted her own children so much it hurt to go there, or if it was because she was so appalled by the prospect she no longer felt the pair of them had anything in common.

‘Not in the traditional sense of the word,’ Christy said. ‘You know that.’

‘Oh yes, you’d have an elective C-section, like your mum.’ Sandra was always banging on about how she’d worked on the Friday morning, then gone into hospital at lunchtime, had Christy removed surgically and was
back at work a fortnight later. ‘I’ve seen what childbirth does to a woman’s body,’ she used to tell the girls grimly, while driving them somewhere in that white Volvo. It was thanks to her that Rosie had been petrified of childbirth first time round, another thing she held against Sandra P. after the appalling way she’d treated Barron. ‘But do you think you want kids?’

‘Not much chance of it at the moment,’ Christy said grimly.

‘With this guy you’re seeing?’

There was a slight pause and then she said: ‘Mmm.’

‘He’s married?’ Rosie almost added, but she stopped herself just in time. ‘Is he worth it?’ she asked instead.

Christy chuckled wryly. ‘Oh, definitely.’

‘Will he leave his wife?’

‘Maybe. I don’t know. He wouldn’t want more kids. He’s already got them.’

‘You wouldn’t rather be with someone who was free?’

For a second she thought Christy was about to really talk but then she said: ‘No, I want to be with him.’ She sighed and pulled her knees up to her chest. ‘It was so good to be out tonight. Do you remember that time in Italy?’

Rosie felt a tinge of frustration. It had always been this way. She came to Christy with her problems but Christy never seemed to have a care in the world – and if she did, say with all the Barron/Sandrine business, she didn’t like to mention it. Still, the kids question
wasn’t worth pursuing. Instead, she giggled: ‘We didn’t realize we were in a gay resort.’