Wasted (18 page)

He looks around. Three teenagers huddle round a laptop discussing something. An overweight woman has just arrived and is taking an overweight baby out of its pushchair, while simultaneously ordering chocolate cake. Two women enter, talking in loud voices as they open the door. A man reads a Sunday newspaper. A young man and woman stare into each other's eyes and she touches the tip of his nose with some cappuccino froth. Lorenzo looks away.

Nearly finished his panini. Coffee almost gone. Really needs a bigger caffeine kick. Should have asked for a double shot. He looks at his watch: 11.30 – plenty of time. Maybe he'll get a quick espresso.

Glances at the mobile again. Nothing. Picks it up. He will email her. In a moment. Drums his fingers. Takes another slug of coffee. Taps the phone to open up a new email screen. It's 11.32, he notices, because time is something which is important to him.

Thinks. What best to say? Doesn't want to sound as though he's nagging. He'd like this visit to be just right. After all, it's not often your only daughter leaves school. He deserves to be part of that, doesn't he? He's not a bad father – they were just a bad couple and it's best for everyone this way. Maybe he'll arrange for flowers to be sent. Would that be a nice touch?

He taps in the letters:

Dear Jessica, Hope your mother told you I'd phoned. Need to know about the weekend. Email me asap please. Dadx

Reads it back. No, too abrupt. He starts again.

Hi, Jessica,

Hope your mother told you I'd phoned. Really looking forward to seeing you soon. But I need to know (asap) which day would be better. I know you've got your prom so Saturday won't work, your mother says. Sunday? Monday? I need to let my hotel know. Maybe we could go for a meal. And I've got a present for you!

Must go. On my way to London now. Email me asap please.

Much love, Dadxx

Lorenzo touches the screen to send it. 11.36. Orders an espresso and downs it quickly, finishes his panini, leaves a tip and goes back to the car. He wants to get going now.

11.38.

The car pulls on to the main road, and soon joins the dual carriageway. And the motorway. He still doesn't feel entirely recovered from the flight, but the coffee and food have certainly helped. He rubs his eyes to remove traces of a slight headache.

Roughly twenty minutes later, a car driven by an idiot is speeding towards a slip road on to the motorway, but that is several miles behind where Jess's father is by this time, so should not affect him. We can watch it though, since we are here.

The car driven by the idiot is on the slip road, coming on to the motorway. The idiot doesn't want to wait. Black car in the left lane needs to do something – speed up? Slow down? Move to the right? Can't speed up: there's a car in front. Can't slow down: there's a car behind. Too many cars everywhere – people going shopping.

Idiot is not slowing down.

Black car needs to move into overtaking lane. No choice. It slips into a dangerously small space. Horns tear the air.

Hearts skitter. Cars dance. Drivers scowl, mouths open, angry. Lights flash. Feet on brakes. Fingers squeeze steering wheels. Breathing freezes.

The idiot slices on to the motorway. A horn blares. Idiot grins.
What's your problem, mate?

Heads shake. Eyes ahead. Lucky escape. For everyone. Could have been so much worse.

12.07.

If…

Meanwhile, some miles ahead, Lorenzo is driving fast. He wants to get to London before the traffic gets worse. He's looking forward to being in his hotel, having his first glass of chilled white wine. Fancies some decent city food. Classy surroundings. On expenses.

He's in control, which is where he likes to be. He's not in control of everyone else on the road though. And some people drive like idiots.

The phone.

Bleeps.

An email.

He glances down.

12.08.

Back to the road. Then back to the screen again. It's Jess. He slides a hand onto the phone, touches the icon. He knows you're not supposed to read texts and things while driving, but he won't pick it up, just glance down. He's not an idiot. Wouldn't put himself in danger. Or not deliberately. No one
wants
to have an accident, after all, but it's only stupid people who can't control a phone with their left hand and the steering wheel with their right.

Glances down. He's touched the wrong bit of the screen. Tries again. The email opens.

Hi, Dad, Mum said you …

Back to the road.

… phoned. Sorry I …

The car in front of him is slowing, for some reason.

… didn't email you last …

Traffic is thickening ahead. Roadworks, maybe.

… night. Really …

Lorenzo slows a little. Keeps his place. He's a good driver.

… busy – I'm singing …

But now the car behind is too close. Way too close.

… with the band that's …

He gestures angrily with his hand.
God, there are maniacs on the road!

… playing at the prom …

A lorry in the middle lane is overtaking another. Racing, by the look of it. Stupid. Lorries can't do that on hills. Everything else is slowing, cars all too close. If anyone makes a mistake now…

He needs to scroll the screen. Feels with his fingers. Strokes it.

Looks down.

Car in front speeds up. Lorenzo too. Foot on accelerator. Passing the lorries now.

Both hands on steering wheel. Presses horn angrily as he passes.

Lorry driver laughing. One finger in the air.

Idiot.

so can't see you

Traffic is slowing, congealing. Amazing how fast the pattern of the road changes. He moves into the middle lane. Slows a little. That'll annoy the lorry driver, but they're all going too fast. Teach them they can't rule the road. Size isn't everything.

… till Monday. Ok?

Yes, Monday's OK. She'll be more relaxed.

The lorry looms in the rear window.

Can't wait to …

Grinning face.

Can't wait to what? See him?

Cars to both sides of him. And in front. There's nowhere to go.

Heart speeding.

Armpits sticky.

Every muscle rigid.

It's like a computer game.

But real.

Every car looks in control. But the tiniest swerve…

The smallest…

AN
hour and a half later, Jess's father pulls up outside the hotel in central London and a valet parks the car while he walks into the hotel. He's already read the end of Jess's message. He hadn't really expected that she was going to say she couldn't wait to see him and sure enough she didn't.

Can't wait to leave school. It's all so weird now. Thinking of travelling with a friend and still maybe music college later but haven't sorted it yet. Let me know if Mon
ok
.

He'll email her back soon. But first, that glass of wine. He's tired and there's a definite headache brewing behind his eyes. So, a glass of wine, a hot shower and then a meal. And an early night.

There's nothing wrong with him that a decent sleep won't put right.

TIME
has slipped by, speeding up. The prom is only a couple of days away. Jack and Jess spend almost all their hours together. Jess dares feel excited now about the future. It has more paths than barriers, more sunbeams than shadows.

Jack is teaching Jess to spin a coin. He says it's all in the mind, not the fingers. You
think
it into the air. You trace the path with your eyes and your heart. You send your soul with it.
It's easy
, he says, his eyes intent.

It's not as easy as he makes out, but Jess is happy enough for him to be so close to her, and laughing.

For laughing seems not to come so easily to him now. Not since, perhaps, the fairground. Or sometime around then. Time has blurred into a shapeless thing and it is hard to remember what happened on one day or another.

Jess needs Jack to carry on laughing. His face when she first saw it, around that music-room door, was wide and alive. Though how could she expect to know what dark currents ran beneath his surface? No one is only skin-deep. Although Jess senses that something is bothering him, she thinks it's just that the prom is only a couple of days away. Natural nerves – it's his band, after all, his passion. But Jess does not know that Jack is playing the game more and more now. From the moment he wakes till the time he goes to bed, he is snatching secret spins of the coin at every opportunity. He is hiding it from everyone: he senses that they would try to stop him, disapprove, laugh. But for Jack it is no laughing matter. It was never only a game for him, but now it's an addiction.

Jack is losing it. He is a boy who has clutched on to control ever since his second mother died, and he has needed to feel that good luck would follow him because of his actions, that nothing was chance, only a strange mix of fortune and reason, and now it's slipping away, the control, everything. Into somewhere very deep and very dark. He cannot explain why. All he knows is that what was once a deadly serious game is now just deadly serious.

Maybe it's something to do with facing the future, all this leaving school and childhood behind. He and Jess have talked about backpacking together in India, or somewhere, and that seems so exciting and yet so … huge, unanchored, full of too many possibilities. Or maybe love has simply knocked him upside down. And the more he understands how he so nearly didn't meet Jess, the more the idea terrifies him; the idea of all those infinite worlds of unknown possibilities has made him dizzy. He is falling into space.

Space is not far above us but everything is different there. There is no wind to carry you along and no one can hear you scream.

And so Jack continues to spin his coin and the people close to him notice only that he's perhaps a little thinner; there's darkness beneath his eyes; and his movements sometimes are jerky.

But still he laughs enough with Jess and touches her and loves her, so she will ignore the shadows and the sudden tiny absences, the times when she sees him staring into nothingness and his fingers become stone-still. We see what we want to see and Jess prefers not to see Jack falling into space.

She is ignoring her friends too. They have mostly returned from the courses or trips they've been on; and finished their exams, all of them now. She's had texts and emails and phone calls, which she's answered briefly. Yes, she's told Chloe and Farah that she's going out with Jack, and they will have told others, and yes, she's told them something about him, but we're talking the odd sentence or two and then
Gotta go – band practice!
Her friends are all talking about what to wear at the prom, but obviously Jess won't be wearing that sort of dress, though she's planned her outfit too. In fact, she bumped into Chloe and some of the others in the shopping mall, and they hugged and chatted and laughed but she felt strange. They messed around, joked about
lurve
and asked her to
Tell us everything and we mean everything.
But Jess found that as she started to tell them what Jack was like she couldn't properly explain him or what she felt. She'd always thought she'd want to tell her friends everything but now … well, where do you start and how do you find the words? So she looked at her watch and pretended she was late.

She's had a bit of an email conversation with her dad too – and Monday is all sorted. She won't tell her mum this, but she's even, oddly, looking forward to seeing him. Especially as he seems to be encouraging the backpacking/India/music-college idea. She hadn't planned to tell him so much so soon but there was a late night when she was fired up after band practice and couldn't sleep, so she'd gone online, found an email from him and replied; and he'd been online at the same time, so the reply came straight away, and it had kind of gone from there. In the darkness of her room, she had felt briefly disloyal to her mum, but she'd pushed that aside. She was doing nothing  wrong.