Chapter 25
Then
And finally.
At last.
We’re both single.
Almost every weekend he waits for me at Brighton station. He’s always early. Leaning in the same spot smoking a rollie. The way he jumps to attention at the influx of passengers boarding off the train tells me I’m an awaited gift. We completely clash: him in washed out, faded rinsed denim and wholesale sports socks, and me, a clown in sunshine yellow and bright red squeaky shoes that honk at every step like I’m tromping along to the circus, my heart a rubber duck. He’s unwashed and greasy and yet so clean at the same time; his teeth shine, his eyes sparkle, his cheeks glow. And I’m here. One time, I have to get my photos taken to renew my passport for a family holiday and he waits outside as the booth flashes silver. I sit on the stool behind the little curtain, wondering what he’s thinking. We wait for them together, and I pray I look decent.
‘Can I have one?’ he asks.
Really?‘Yeah, course’ – ACT COOL – ‘I only need two.’
And he carefully folds and rips off the bottom left quarter from the window of me. He puts it in his wallet, in the clear bit where grown-ups put the photos of their kids.
WHAT. IS. THIS?
He always keeps the entire weekend clear for me; I never feel compromised or a burden. He says we can do whatever we want – play the arcades, rummage the second-hand shops, go to the pier. Time glimmers here; it’s perfect – a holiday away from home. We eat chips on the beach, buy matching tin turquoise thumb rings from a street market (like wedding rings?! NO! Ella!). We try on clothes, returning from the changing room curtain to parade. Some of the outfits make us crack up with laughter, but seeing him try on a simple jacket can bring me to my knees.
Lowe’s housemates continue to be stumped by our innocent laughter filling the dusty corners of the living room, warming up the kitchen with our conversation as we make toast. They look at me with hungover, hungry, Lost-Boy-red eyes, like I’m Wendy here to darn their socks and fix their lives. We leave to wind the lanes, stopping on every corner for him to say hi to somebody, or take more photos with a stranger, and he always introduces me as his best friend.
‘This is Ella,’ he says proudly. Even though the fans definitely don’t care to meet me.
And I love being with him and the torch I have for him is a phoenix rising, burning and ready to blow. The volume of my life is louder, my surroundings brighter and brighter – shooting day for a postcard bright. I feel I have enough heat in my heart that I could evaporate the sea to sand. We hardly go back to his little brown room, just stay out all day, charging our phones in coffee shops or under pub tables, or just allowing the battery to completely drain and die and we’re off-grid, invisible and free, together. Letting the day do what it wants with us. At night, we go dancing, to clubs and venues, where one time I regrettably sing Linkin Park at indie-karaoke with possibly too much zest. All the while, many many, so many girls try and hug him, kiss him, tell him that they love him.
Lowe is a heartthrob; girls fall at his feet, but he always makes me feel like the only girl in the room.
I stand behind the decks as he DJs an after-party. He’s put a pair of headphones around my neck to make me look legit but I haven’t got a clue what I’m doing. I watch girls with love-heart-shaped eyes trying to hypnotize him with their drunken glares. I feel the need to shake them and say, He’s just a guy, get on with your life, wake up! Forgetting I’ve been in a Lowe-Love-coma for years. None of these girls love you like I do. Not one. He plays my favourite songs.
Some nights Dom from college and her girlfriend Ruby, who lives out here and smokes rollies and has incredible hair right down to her bum, come along too and I meet all their friends. And all the bands’ friends. And Lowe’s housemates. And their friends. And everyone knows everyone and everyone knows the others we’ve scooped up between us, over the years, along the way. Nobody questions our friendship because we’re both ‘adults’ and single and nothing is happening. WHY ISN’T ANYTHING HAPPENING? ‘Wow, they really are just friends – well, isn’t that remarkable?’
Our friendship restores faith in humanity, yet at the same time I feel shit about it. It’s a total scam on my part: my love for Lowe, if anything, is only getting stronger. Cementing. Crystalizing. I am a barnacle. A wart. Stubbornly refusing to wash away. A tick. I wish I could be de-rooted, tweezered out, before I get eternally trapped under his skin forever. Like Carrie Bradshaw, I couldn’t help but wonder what he’d be up to if I wasn’t here with him. How many of those girls he would stop and talk to.
On a night out, a girl who looks like a model from the Sixties wants to talk to Lowe outside. Outside means away from me. She drags him by the zip of his hoodie, eyelashes fluttering. I can see him, faintly, through a stained-glass window – candle-lit diamonds in blues, greens and reds over his face – but not clear enough to read his expression, to see if he’s looking for me. What are they talking about?
Now I feel like some estranged cousin who his parents force him to hang out with whilst they’re in town. To occupy, to keep busy, to tag along.
Ryan, Lowe’s scarecrow housemate, finds me on the leather couch. He invites himself to take a seat, his flat pint splashing froth on my yellow velvet flower print dress. ‘Whooops, sorry!’ He makes himself laugh and I laugh back even though I’m annoyed. He eases in. ‘So … you and Lowe, then?’
‘What about us?’
‘You guys … ?’ He criss-crosses his hands, his fingers interlocked. ‘A thing? Or just … ?’
‘No!’ I shriek. ‘We’re just friends.’
He wiggles his finger at me sloppily. He’s pissed; he has a stain down his front; he’s harmless, possibly trying to flirt. ‘No, no, no, don’t play games. You sleep in his bed every week – you’re together all the time. You’re single; he’s single – what’s the deal?’
‘There is no deal.’ I laugh it off weakly, to be polite – not that I owe the scarecrow anything. But there is a problem – Lowe’s outside with a girl. Ryan swigs his drink, offering me some. I shake my head, looking for Lowe over his shoulder.
‘You really don’t fancy him then?’ he asks me, plainly, rubbing his stubble. Oh no, he’s gearing up for something – I can feel it. ‘You don’t like him?’
‘I do’ – but I don’t want it to get back to Lowe that suddenly I’m in love with him because I don’t want whatever this intimacy is to stop – ‘but not like that.’ I put my hands on my lap. Clasped. My prison of a secret, safe.
Ryan, somewhat convinced, nods, his tongue clicking. Don’t do it – oh God, he’s doing it. ‘What about a drink with me one day, then?’
I laugh it off. ‘Ryan, you’re not serious; you’re drunk. You’ve seen me looking a state, eating cereal out of your pint glasses for weeks—’
‘I like it! It’s nice having a woman’s touch around the place!’ he defends innocently, not realizing how offensive that is.
‘I’m not Snow White!’ I can only imagine how Ryan sees me, singing whilst letting the deer from outside lick the plates clean like in the cartoon – which by the way is not the way to clean a plate. ‘Anyway, I’m not really looking to date.’
‘Aw, please?’ he begs. ‘I won’t look like this.’ He drapes his hand down his body and it makes me laugh. I look up at the stained-glass window. Lowe and the Sixties model are gone. I swallow. Fear sets in. The bass of the music bolts through me: where is he? Don’t tell me he’s gone off with that girl. He wouldn’t do that to me, would he? How can I even be so sure?
Ryan is still there, coldly blinking, eagerly waiting my response. ‘I’m a nice bloke, I promise.’
‘I know you are, Ryan,’ I say. ‘But I really don’t want to be your Mrs Scarecrow.’
‘One drink?’
‘Fine. Yes. OK. One day we can have One Drink.’
Ryan has more chance of having a beer with David Bowie.
‘Yessssss!’ He fist pumps. ‘Get in!’
‘Please don’t do that again,’ I say, but then we actually find ourselves laughing.
‘See? This is why I need you around.’
Lowe makes his way over to me. Where the hell has he been? Where’s the girl?
‘Nightmare,’ he says. ‘One of our friends’ ex-girlfriend. Keeps trying to chat to us about their break-up.’
Really?
His loyalty surprises me every time. No matter what happens on any night out, who we speak to, dance with, who steals us for a-too-long-cigarette or corners us, robs us of each other, we always walk home, hand in hand through the navy night along the seafront. Walking away from everyone like the last two people on earth. I wonder if it’s the same for him – is he so happy he could die too? Because I’d go like this, in this state of felicity. The elements battle, rain so hard it’s needles. My shoes are puddles but he’s the one for me; with the lantern of him in my heart, I can do anything.
We hurry inside for tea, the key wet, slippery in his hand, his housemates sleeping or still out for the night. We play ‘house’ in the dark. I towel dry my hair and feel the black flecks of running mascara smudge on my fingers. I wish I could look sexy soaking wet, like one of those beachy-hair girls who let their hard nipples point through soaked vest tops but I know I look like the Penguin from Batman Returns. He kicks his jeans off with a smile. I put them on the radiator because I know he wouldn’t do it, and the smell of wet pub floors begins to brew. We brush our teeth at the same time, staring in the mirror, polishing our smiles. Then we slink back into the bedroom to listen to soft music for a bit, and I admire the room he’s built for himself. I soak in his humanbeingness. How if he’s hungry – he eats. If he’s tired – he sleeps. If he’s cold – he puts clothes on. If something’s broken – he fixes it. Nothing needs to be new; it’s used or worn until it falls apart, and if it isn’t used he gives it away.
His silhouette, like a protective guardian, hangs over me. I catch sight of his skin, his ribs, his freckles, his soft belly and his arms. His armpit hair. Oh God. And he politely waits outside whilst I change into my silly actual matching teal pyjamas. I never attempt to look hot. ‘I’m gonna melt your heart,’ I joke as I reveal my scrubby twinset. He slams his hand over his heart. ‘Oh, I’m melting!’ and he watches me crawl towards him in his little lived-in brown bed that to me is like a four-poster super king with Egyptian cotton 800-thread-count sheets at the poshest hotel in the world, and my room service is strong tea in some mug that doubles up as an ashtray. He keeps a photo of his mum taped to his side of the bed, by his pillow, her face watching him whilst he sleeps. He looks so much like her. Beautiful.
Nothing happens, not once. We just hold each other the whole night. His tender arms – smooth, naturally sculpted, just right, how a human’s arm should be, rather than pumped from weight-lifting – wrap around my gigantic bursting heart.
Once, when we’re waiting to fall asleep, I ask, ‘Have you ever fallen over on stage?’
‘Of course, loads. I fell over on tour; I had a pint in my hand and tripped on the top step. I was covered in beer; I had to just get on with it.’
We both giggle in the darkness.
‘Did people see?’
‘Everyone saw, Ella. I, like, properly dropped on my hands and knees! Like a … cow position.’
We belly laugh; tears spring out of our eyes.
‘Did you laugh?’
‘Yeah, how could you not? It was so funny … ’
‘What did you do?’
‘I was just like oh. And had to carry on.’
‘Aahahaha! Sorry,’ I cry. ‘It’s just the image of you, thinking you’re so cool and then down you go … ’
‘Down I went.’
Our stomachs ache. We manage to collect ourselves for a moment of peace. And then one of us splutters into laughter, and we’re off again.
Another time he says, ‘I like your eyes.’
And I say, ‘I like yours.’
And that’s it. Then we roll over. We sleep the night, soundly, back-to-back, spine to spine, like the Kappa logo.
He says, ‘These are the favourite nights of my life. When you’re here. I’m at my happiest when I’m with you.’
He says, ‘Goodnight, Ella Cole.’
I worry that in the morning light he’ll be regretful, itching to get on with his day without me, like he can’t wait to pack me back on the train to London with a takeaway cup of black coffee and sober frostiness, fumbling the ice-cold kiss of fresh mint toothpaste and reset: ‘See Ya.’
But no: it’s the opposite. I will never forget his face in the mornings, seeing me there on his pillow; he seems to hold me even tighter. Are we friends? Or something more? I don’t know. But I do know how comfortable I am in his sheets, in my skin, in the bungalow of him.
This goes on for a few weekends in a row. Constant consistency, speaking in shorthand, day after day, late nights, proper fry-up breakfasts, tea in bed, me reading books and him listening to music on his headphones. We share cups, socks, jumpers, money, food, ideas. I know what he likes. White chocolate. Cheeseburgers. Satsumas that he splits with me. We are bound. Waiting. For Lowe to get his shit together, to muster the courage to switch us into a new gear. For what we’ll become.
Stepdad Adam takes us on a family holiday. An all-inclusive, three-star hotel in Egypt with seven curly waterslides and watered-down Coke on tap. Every evening, after a day of falling in and out of sleep and reading and writing poems by the pool, I come back to my room and sit, whilst Violet and Sonny watch stupid comedies and eat almond Magnums. Hair dripping, on the edge of my bed, I speak to Lowe when I can from the hotel room phone (I get badly in trouble with my mum and Stepdad Adam about the bill). I’ve never been so far from him. I have perspective; I feel like I’m recharging somehow. Preparing to return, glowing, and for everything to fall into place.
On my return, True Love have a big gig happening. Their biggest yet. The major record label that has been chasing them for months and has offered a deal is coming down. So of course, I’m going to Brighton to watch them play. I’m staying with Dom and Ruby because Lowe’s been in rehearsals. I’ve not seen him for almost a month.
I wear cut-off red tights, a blue denim mini skirt. A second-hand shirt speckled in bunches of purple grapes. I spend a good twenty minutes doing the buttons up and down, not sure if I should show a glimpse of my pink bra or not, but then decide against it.
I meet Dominique and Ruby, Lowe’s housemates – yes, Scarecrow Ryan – and the rest of the new Brighton lot at the pub beforehand. We bump into loads of people we know. Friends, super-fans, groupies. Everybody is saying how well I look after my holiday and I know it isn’t the holiday at all that’s fired up this glow. It’s Lowe, the effect he has on me. We drink pints and feel the electricity that comes before a gig, especially their gigs, like a birthday party. We sing along to every word. Especially in front of record labels – then we really exaggerate our singing. We have a role to play tonight and we are ready.
Ryan swings open the heavy door to the venue, his palm pressed over my head, making an arm-arch for me to walk under. Our wrists stamped, out tickets torn, he says, ‘Have you met Lowe’s new girlfriend yet?’
And it just hits me.
Like that.
I burst into water like Amélie does in the café scene.
Landslide.
Like somebody has reached inside my bloody chest, ripped open my ribcage like a set of jaws and yanked my bulging heart out – all the important tubes still attached – and is now crushing it, before me. Behold the butchery of me, my carcass upside down, drained and hollowed out, swinging on a hook in the foyer of a club. People push past my ghost with their tickets, to buy t-shirts, to worship my murderer.
Well, that’s taken the wind right out of my sails.
The only feeling worse than being heartbroken is having to pretend you aren’t.
‘No,’ I say. ‘I haven’t.’
‘You still up for grabbing that drink soon?’
But Ryan’s bumped into someone he knows. I hear him introduce me but I’m already walking away from his small talk that shouts so big. I feel so fucking sorry for my own self, swishing about like we’re something when this very housemate and all the others know he has a new girlfriend. I feel like a mug.
Why hasn’t Lowe told me? Why hasn’t he said? I didn’t even know he’d met anyone. And why the fuck would he do this? What in the world would let this happen? I look at Dominique, wincing and cringing, and I can tell she knows, and probably, definitely, maybe just didn’t know how to tackle this with me because I’ve never tackled Lowe with me. As I said, everyone knows everyone. What did I think? That I could just dip in and out of Brighton and London, squeeze in a holiday and assume the whole place would freeze in time until my return? Did I think things didn’t happen? That people didn’t talk. Didn’t move. Didn’t touch. Maybe this has been going on longer than I thought? Maybe I was just his little weekend girlfriend?
I tug on Dom’s sleeve to get close. ‘What’s she like?’ Because I have to know; she has to be pretty special, otherwise there is no single excuse on this whole earth’s crust why he would love somebody who isn’t me. Or maybe she made a wish on a star that actually paid attention? FUCK! I want to storm into Lowe’s dressing room and say, You’ve made a fucking fool out of me. You’ve broken my absolute heart. What the hell was all that? What are we? Who even ARE you? and then smash up the whole room.
And Dominque replies like she’d been asked the question a hundred times before, or more likely she’s rehearsed it. ‘She’s … striking.’
STRIKING.
I wish Dom was a liar.
I might as well pull the elastic of a sling shot back as far as it’ll go and launch a rock at my own face. ‘What’s her name?’
‘Heather, I think. Yeah, Heather,’ Dominique says. Heather. ‘She’s from New Zealand, studying here.’
I’ve always wanted to go to New Zealand. It seems so fresh, green spritzy and peaceful, doesn’t it? I don’t why know what tells me that this Heather is here to stay.
And I’m right.
Of course, after that bomb, I try to dance at the gig. I try to sing along and be that friend. I try to stop my eyes from peering through the bobbing heads to identify this mystery ‘striking’ girl, but the room is a blur. Someone takes a photo and I’m beaming with delight, grinning like a Cheshire cat. You’d never know; you’d never have any idea that inside my guts are decaying in fast-motion like those flowers in ET. Like the documentary we watched in primary school of the mouse decomposing sped up. That’s me: mould in my tummy, in my lungs. In my mouth and chest and throat. Mould in my eyes. Mould in my heart.
This sharp shock blading through me. I’m still so soft, I’m still that overripe peach; I cut so easily.
No, I don’t hang around after the show, even though Lowe’s calling and texting, asking where I am, where the after-party is; he’s got me a gold wrist band, WHOOP-DE-FUCKING-DOOP! Oh, thanks, how about FUCK YOU? What, so I can make you look great in front of your new AR? I don’t think so. I keep myself to myself. No, I don’t want to meet her. I don’t want to cradle her at her first show for him. Play babysitter whilst Lowe chats to his record label all night. Buy each other rounds. Welcome her to the family. Where we’re all just fans, Heather. Hopeless fans! I am nineteen. FIVE years. Just MOVE on, girl. GET YOUR LIFE TOGETHER! Two years was too much.Three years insulting. Five years: you’re the mug. Loving him is not compulsory, Ella. It is not all you know. There are options. Other ways to be loved.
I really thought all of that was it.
What a waste of make-up.
It’s too late to take the train so I sleep at Dom’s. But I barely sleep. I lay my rag of a body down on the sofa. Dom holds me but says nothing. I’ve come to know this feeling well: of intuitive friends knowing what I can’t say out loud. I drink a mint tea. ‘With a sugar?’ Yes please. I say I have a stomach ache. But the pain is in my chest. If a doctor were to give me an X-ray they would see that my heart is broken. They would see Lowe swimming in my blood. You’ve been infected, they’d say. How long has this been going on? How long have you been living in pain? How long have you been doing this to yourself? They would diagnose me with foolishness, naivety, gullibility, desperation, lovesickness, embarrassment.
The next morning my phone is actually ringing inside my pocket as I step onto the train. It’s Lowe. I let it ring. For the first time, Lowe Archer is calling me and I ignore it. I find a seat. I look out of the window, catch my reflection; my hair is growing out of the bowl cut and into the helmet of an astronaut; the process of change, like anything, is always quite ugly but I know, just like the poisonous sky, it won’t last forever. I put my headphones in and wait. Until at last, the train pulls away.