Chapter 21
TWENTY-ONE
MAY 2011
‘Wow, Naomi!’ Amina, my flatmate, squealed when she saw me. ‘What the actual fuck are you wearing? And your hair…!’
She put down her cup of tea next to her laptop and doubled over laughing.
‘I know, right?’ I paused in my bedroom doorway, caught between shyness and amusement. ‘Is it too much?’
‘Depends what you’re doing. First date with Mr Might-be-Right? Get right back in there now and change. Fancy dress party? You’re all good.’
I turned back into my room and looked at myself in the mirror for the millionth time. My hair was gelled, back-combed and sprayed into wild spikes. My eyes were heavily ringed with black, my face even paler than usual thanks to thick ivory foundation. My lips were blood red. My tights were ripped below a tiny pleather skirt and my feet were squeezed into pointy, silver-buckled boots.
‘I think I’m all good,’ I said. ‘I’m off to Camden to see a Cure tribute band.’
‘That’s a relief.’ She picked up her tea again. ‘You’ll fit right in.’
‘So long as I can get there on the Tube without seeing anyone from work.’ I grimaced at my reflection, suddenly doubtful. ‘I’d never live it down.’
‘Frankly, they wouldn’t recognise you. Who are you going with, anyway?’ She eyed me beadily. ‘Do you have a whole circle of punk mates no one knows about?’
‘Negative. Just Patch, and he’s not a punk. We just like some of the same music.’
‘Patch? The one with the girlfriend?’
‘No – I mean, yes.’
‘Got to be one or the other.’
I minced over to her and sat down. ‘Jeez, these boots are killing me already. I’ll be in agony by the end of the night. Yeah, he’s got a girlfriend. My friend Zara. But the thing is…’
‘The thing is you fancy the pants off him and you don’t want to do the dirty on your mate?’
‘No! Sisters before misters, like always. But she’s not really acting like she’s got a boyfriend right now, and I don’t know how to tell him. Or even whether to tell him.’
Amina pushed the teapot over to me, reaching behind her for another mug. ‘Go on.’
I hesitated, inhaling the steam from my tea. I’d made a promise to Zara two months before, when she’d asked me to tell Patch she was in Stockholm. As it happened, he hadn’t asked, but I hadn’t told anyway – not him, and not Rowan, Kate or Abbie. I felt even worse about keeping secrets from them than I did about keeping them from him.
And now I felt worse still. Because Zara had asked me to lie again, and the lie was bigger. A few days before, I’d woken up to a text from her that had made me feel kind of cold and dirty, like I’d fallen face first into a muddy puddle.
Zara:
Shit, Naomi. I have the hangover from hell and I’m the worst person ever
The message had been sent two hours before, at what would have been about five in the morning in Paris. I lay on my back in bed, my phone propped on my chest, and replied:
Naomi:
What happened? Are you okay?
Her answer came straight away.
Zara:
Apart from poisoned by absinthe. Yeah, I guess I’ll live. Not that I deserve to.
Concerned, I pushed myself higher up on my pillows.
Naomi:
It can’t be that bad! You’ve got beer fear, that’s all. Or absinthe anxiety, which must be worse.
Zara:
Haha, v funny. You always make me feel better. Please, Nome, tell me to stop getting pissed and doing things I shouldn’t do.
Naomi:
Stop getting pissed and doing – whatever you did.
I didn’t want to know. I really didn’t. But I could sense that she was going to tell me anyway, and there was nothing I could do to stop her.
Sure enough, she texted back:
Zara:
As Oscar Wilde didn’t say, to shag one random stranger looks like misfortune, to shag two looks like carelessness. I’ve been careless, Nome.
Before I could compose a reply, she messaged again.
Zara:
Please don’t tell Patch. Pleasepleaseplease, I beg you.
‘Shit.’ I frowned at my phone’s screen, torn between anger at Zara – why was she doing this to me, putting me in this impossible position? And even more to the point, why was she doing this to Patch? – and my instinct to support my friend when she needed me.
Naomi:
That’s not cool, Zee. You know it’s not. You should tell him. Or just end it. If you’re shagging other people, it can’t be working with him.
Even as I pressed Send, I felt a stab of guilt – Yeah, you want her to end it, don’t you, Naomi? And why might that be?
Zara:
It is working though. I need him. He’s the only good thing in my life right now – apart from you, obviously. I’m such a terrible person and I don’t deserve anyone to love me but he does, and I need that.
Naomi:
If he loves you, he’ll forgive you.
Even as I typed, I doubted it – and a selfish part of me hoped it wasn’t true.
Zara:
Why should he? Come on, Nome. But if I never do it again, it might be like it never happened.
Again, before I could find words to answer her, another message flashed on to my screen.
Zara:
When you see him again – he’s in London this weekend, right? – can you talk to him? Like, sound him out. Maybe he’s been seeing someone else too and that would kind of cancel it out. Will you? I promise I’ll never ask you another favour again as long as I live. And whatever you do, don’t tell anyone.
So, reluctantly, I’d said I would try my best.
‘What a mess,’ Amina said, when I’d finished pouring out the story to her.
She didn’t count, I told myself. She didn’t know Patch or Zara and she’d never tell anyone anyway. She was a solicitor and probably bound by some code of confidentiality or something.
‘It’s grim,’ I agreed. ‘So I’m seeing him tonight and I don’t know what to do. It feels all kinds of wrong.’
‘You know what my advice is?’
‘What?’
‘Stay out of it. Don’t tell him anything. And don’t ask about his love life either. Tell her you didn’t get a chance, or whatever. It’s not your fuck-up to fix, it’s hers.’
Feeling like a burden had been lifted, I said, ‘You really think so?’
‘I honestly do. Now take yourself and your ridiculous hair off and have a fun night.’
‘I’ll try. Thanks. And, Amina…?’
‘Mmm?’
‘Can I borrow your leather jacket?’
As it happened, I couldn’t have asked Patch anything even if I’d wanted to. By the time I arrived at the pub, a cavernous space by the canal near Camden Market, the gig was already in full swing and I could barely hear him when he asked if I wanted a beer. For the next three hours, we communicated mostly in hand signals, when we weren’t dancing, singing along to our favourite tunes, or admiring the outfits around us, most of which were even more outlandish than my own.
Patch himself was wearing black jeans, a faded black T-shirt with a Bauhaus logo on it (kudos to him, I thought – he’d either had it for years or hit the jackpot in an Aberdeen charity shop), and eyeliner. I had thought his eyes looked larger and more luminous than usual. I imagined him walking out of his mother’s house wearing it, getting on the Tube, not caring what people thought of him. It was a side of him I’d never seen before, and a side I realised I liked very much – probably too much.
But I didn’t want to think about liking him, because that would immediately lead to thoughts about Zara. I wanted to drink beer after beer, sing along as loud as I could to Just Like Heaven , join the moshing crowd by the stage, and forget my troubles.
And it worked. By the time the band finished at almost two in the morning, my throat was raw from singing, I was lightheaded from drinking and my hair was sticky with sweat as well as gel. Patch put his arm round my shoulder to guide me through the press of people towards the exit, and the cold, damp night air filled my lungs as we stepped outside.
‘That was pretty awesome, right?’ he asked.
‘Totally awesome. The best time. God, I’m actually quite pissed.’
‘Quite right too.’ He grinned. ‘Like a proper rocker.’
‘Goths aren’t rockers, though,’ I argued. ‘Aren’t they meant to get high on amphetamines and… I don’t know. Misery?’
He laughed. ‘I don’t feel miserable tonight. Not a bit. Makes a nice change.’
What did he mean? Was he talking about the loneliness of working offshore for weeks at a time, or something else? Did he know about Zara’s infidelity? Had she taken my advice and told him, or had he guessed? Or was it about something else entirely?
I didn’t know. But I was distracted from my bewilderment by a sudden awareness of the pain in my feet. While we were dancing, I’d been able to ignore it, but now it came back with renewed force.
‘Ouch.’ I winced, stumbling slightly so I cannoned into him. ‘My feet really, really hurt. These shoes are a size too small.’
‘Problem. We’ve missed the last Tube, so we’ll have to get a bus. Or a taxi, I guess.’
We’d paused now, leaning on a railing overlooking the canal, waiting for the crowd around us to thin. It was almost but not quite raining, a light drizzle shivering the dark water below us, the reflections of the lights blurry and indistinct.
‘I’m going to have to take them off.’
‘Or I can carry you. But first…’
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a hip flask, handing it to me. It was warm from his body. I unscrewed the cap and took a sip, fiery bourbon searing my throat.
‘You came prepared,’ I said.
‘Think of me as a Saint Bernard dog, rescuing stranded goths from the streets of London.’
I laughed. ‘Isn’t it water they carry? This is better, though.’
I returned the flask to him and he said, ‘Cheers. To an amazing night.’
‘And friendship.’
As soon as I said it, I regretted it. I didn’t feel friendly towards him right in that moment – I felt something else entirely, and what it was made me no friend at all to Zara.
I took the hip flask and had another gulp. The spirit went down more easily that time, pleasantly warming rather than blazingly harsh. Then I passed it back to him.
He hesitated, took another drink and cleared his throat. ‘If I say something, promise you won’t be offended?’
‘Yeah, like I’m going to get the hump and hobble off into the rain.’
‘Fair point. Not a bad strategy, actually – when you want to tell a woman something and you’re not sure how it’s going to land, make sure she’s wearing shoes she can’t walk in.’
‘Exactly – talk about a captive audience. So go ahead.’
I had no idea what he was going to say – I genuinely didn’t. But something in me must have sensed it would be important, because I felt my breath coming faster and my heart beating hard in my chest.
‘I’ve never seen anyone look as beautiful as you do now, with eyeliner all over your face,’ he said.
And all at once, something inside me changed – only it wasn’t really a change but a thing that had been there for ages, which I’d become so used to burying and denying I’d become able to pretend it wasn’t there. My desire for him sprang out like the shoots of a long-dormant seed, or a chemical reaction that had needed just the right conditions in the test tube to make it happen.
I didn’t think about it – I wasn’t capable of thought. I just swivelled my body around and took a step closer to him, so I could feel the warmth of him.
‘If I kissed you, would that be a really terrible idea?’ I whispered.
‘Probably,’ he said, his face gently leaning towards mine.
And then he kissed me.