Chapter Twenty-Three
Tamzin had been going out with George for three weeks. Three blissful weeks of holding hands. Kissing. Laughing, talking. Eating fast food.
George had such a huge appetite and punctuated his days with, ‘I need a McDonald’s,’ or, ‘How long till I get a pizza?’ Tamzin was actually beginning to gain weight because she sat beside him and opened her mouth like an obedient little bird as he fed her titbits of pizza dough festooned with cheese or strips of spicy chicken, while he ate.
Besides Erica, Rob and Marty, George had loads of friends; it made her head spin how many. He fell over them at every pub, club and gig.
In the busier of these, Tamzin withdrew — and tonight was happy-cheapy night at Danny Boyes, so mega busy. As the place heaved and voices rose she grew sweaty and tense. To her surprise, George seemed to realise and, when holding her hand didn’t make her feel any better, just whispered, ‘Let’s go,’ in her ear and led her out into the night, out of the rafter-shaking racket.
‘Are you a panicker?’ He pulled her close to kiss her.
She snuggled into his arms, the evening air chilly after the cheerful fug inside. ‘Kind of. I’m sorry if I spoilt your night.’
‘So what is it? Crowds?’
She felt her hands become fists. ‘Not always. It’s certain kinds . . . Certain people. It sounds so stupid when I say it aloud.’
‘It can’t be stupid if it makes you feel so crazy bad.’ The street was quiet. He pulled her down beside him on a wall. ‘Tell me about it.’
‘You’ll think I’m babyish.’ She shivered.
He squeezed her tightly. ‘I’m on your side, Tamz.’
She leaned her forehead against his collarbone, squeezing shut her eyes as if it would be easier if she couldn’t see him, and took a deep breath. ‘You know that I dropped out of uni in my first year? I had problems with some people.’ She swallowed down her thudding heart. ‘They were known as the Coven, this group. They appointed themselves arbiters of popularity; decided who was in and who was out. They had this well cruel sense of humour. You were OK if they thought you were cool, and OK if they ignored you, but if they picked on you — they just made life hideous.’ Her voice was muffled.
He kissed her hair. ‘Girls can be bitches.’
Moisture leaked from her eyes and onto his T-shirt, anxiety rising in her throat. ‘The Coven weren’t girls. They were all clever and good-looking blokes — and hateful! Patrick and Lucas were the leaders. They’d select somebody and ridicule them constantly, for entertainment. The somebody was me.’
She hid her eyes against him. ‘It sounds so childish. But they condemned every aspect of my life, my clothes, music, car, accent, hair, skin, body. I began to smoke dope. I’d never smoked it before but some of the girls thought it would help me chill. It didn’t. I had a thing with Lucas and the Coven used it to spread lies about my supposed perversions. I smoked and smoked but I couldn’t chill. I couldn’t not care.’
She choked on a sob. ‘I got terrible downers. And as the coming down got worse and worse, I smoked more and more.’
‘Cannabis would only fuck you up more, you poor little sod.’ He rocked her in his arms. ‘Those shitty bastards. I’d like to rip their fucking heads off.’
The ice of his anger somehow began to make her feel better. ‘Dad came and got me. He wanted to bring in the police, lawyers, make them pay, shave their heads, put them in the stocks. But I just wanted to go home and curl up and forget it.’
George’s arms tightened around her. ‘You can forget it now.’
* * *
Being in love with George made Tamzin something she’d pretty much forgotten how to be. Happy.
George was wicked, George was amazing, and every time Tamzin thought about him the space between her shoulder blades prickled and the pit of her stomach felt hot.
So it was a small blow a couple of days later to find him full of what, to him, was good news. ‘Bryony’s going to meet us at the pub, tonight. Be amazin’, we’ve hardly seen her since she came back.’
Tamzin smiled as her heart sank.
It had never really struck her that a lot of George’s friends would have been Bryony’s friends, too, even though first Diane and then George had told her that they’d been buddies all their lives. If she’d thought of Bryony at all it had been as safely out of the way in Purtenon, with Diane, or perhaps visiting Uncle Gareth in hospital.
She hadn’t envisioned her borrowing her parents’ Peugeot and bursting right into the middle of Tamzin’s good time. But there she was, hurling herself at Erica and Marty for joyous, wet-eyed hugs. ‘Oh, oh, it’s so good to see you! This is so cool .’ And then George, an especially long, meaningful hug. ‘I’ve missed you, Gorgeous.’
George laughed. ‘Yeah, so much you’d forget to email me for weeks ’n weeks.’
Bryony pouted. ‘I didn’t have my own computer, I had to wait to get to a cyber café and there were none near to where I worked. Hello.’ She sat down with a brief smile and nod to Tamzin. George reclaimed his seat and even gave Tamzin back his hand to hold but his eyes and ears were Bryony’s for the next hour as she poured out her life since she’d left Peterborough. ‘The school, the school needed so much doing to it and the children, the children were so beautiful but so poor. We talk about underprivilege here but it’s nothing, nothing like there.’
Rob, across the table from Tamzin, was the only one to look unimpressed. He even yawned a couple of times. Tamzin, who found yawns contagious, had to struggle to suppress her own, causing Rob to wink conspiratorially at her.
Tamzin liked Rob. There was no bullshit about him, he was just a nice guy who usually had too many zits to shave and the face fuzz didn’t show because his bedhead hair hung all over his face anyway.
Rob began to tell Tamzin about his college course and the part-time job he’d just started at a care home and how, on his first day, he’d somehow managed to kick an elderly man’s stick out of his hand. ‘Luckily I caught him before he hit the deck.’
She grinned. ‘I bet the old ladies love you.’
‘Yeah, as it happens. I put new batteries in their hearing aids for them.’ He nodded towards Bryony and dropped his voice. ‘Bet she wants to come back to the band.’
Tamzin’s lip dropped in dismay. ‘Can she? You’re the drummer, now.’
Rob shrugged, drawing a sad face on the table in spilt beer. ‘Suppose. But bands are democratic. If the others say they want her instead of me, then I’ll, like, have to go. She and Georgie started the band. She’s one of the Jenners of Jenneration.’
‘But she left.’
‘Like that’s going to change anything.’
‘Oh. Right.’ They turned to look at Bryony burbling at the end of the table, looking like a busty imp with her dark eyes and curly hair and curious low-waist jeans with braces that Diane had apparently already been let loose on, judging by the tawny embroidery and silver oval beads.
But it wasn’t long before the burbling had died down to a sputter, and Bryony’s eyes were filling up. Tamzin felt a spear of jealousy to see her put her forehead against George’s shoulder, much as Tamzin had done the day before. ‘I’m pregnant,’ she confessed.
‘No!’ everybody breathed.
And among the gasps of surprise and murmurs sympathy, Tamzin couldn’t help but meet Rob’s eye. He grinned and mimed a drum roll on the tabletop.
* * *
At the end of the evening, Tamzin and George saw Bryony to her car. It was dark because some of the streetlights were out; even the moon seemed to be having a bad cloud day. George held Tamzin’s hand, although both Bryony and George were so quiet that Tamzin began to wonder whether they wished she wasn’t there. But Bryony drove straight off and George watched the tail lights disappear. Tamzin had brought her own car, feeling really cool and brave to have brought it all the way into the city. Climbing into the passenger seat, George flung himself back with a sigh.
‘What do you think of that, then?’
‘Bryony’s news?’ she asked, cautiously.
‘Yeah.’ He shook his head. ‘She’s pregnant by some guy she has almost no chance of getting any cash or help out of. Pregnant . I can’t believe it. What the fuck was she thinking? Doesn’t she carry condoms? And the way she announced it, as if she expected us all to rally round.’
‘People get pregnant all the time. Contraception fails—’
‘’Specially if you don’t use it.’
Ignobly, Tamzin felt a burst of happiness. All evening she’d dreaded discovering that George’s affection for Bryony was more than cousinly, but it seemed that George was more irritated than enthralled.
‘You have to be careful,’ he insisted. ‘You just have to be careful. I’m always careful. Aren’t you?’
Tamzin nodded. ‘I used to be on the pill but I haven’t . . . there hasn’t been anyone. Since uni.’
Slowly, George turned towards her. ‘You haven’t since uni?’
In the darkness, the air felt as if somebody had charged it with static electricity. ‘I told you about having a bad time,’ she whispered.
George didn’t move but still somehow seemed to get closer. ‘Has your doctor or therapist told you not to?’
A nervous giggle. ‘Of course not.’
He laughed, too; low, husky. ‘That’s a good start, then.’ He slid his arms around her. Very softly, gently, he kissed her. ‘Did you hate sex?’ he whispered, his mouth touching hers.
‘No.’ Her heart broke into a canter.
‘Did you like it?’ His hand stroked her back, and she shivered.
‘Sometimes,’ she croaked.
He laughed again. ‘I’d like it with you. Do you think you might like it with me?’
She shivered. ‘I might.’
He nuzzled her neck and let his hand glide down her back to her hip. ‘I think you would. I think it would be amazin’. You don’t have to. But I really want to, Tamz.’
She felt giddy and panicky all at once. ‘I haven’t got anything.’
‘I have. I’m always careful. It’s all right if you don’t want to — but I totally want you to want to.’
She giggled again as he kissed her ear, her heart soaring at the heady experience of being the object of desire. ‘I think I want to.’
They drove out to a place near one of the lakes, a place George knew — there was no way it was going to work out in Tamzin’s little hatchback with somebody George’s height. By the time they were lying on the bumpy grass together, she was shivering.
George crushed her in his arms as if he was doing his damnedest to become part of her. ‘You can change your mind, Tamz, if you don’t want to do it.’
‘I think I want to but . . . you know. What happened before.’
‘Pretend it’s the first time,’ he whispered. ‘It’s something amazin’ and new, just for us.’
He was gentle and slow, his fingertips fluttering over her like butterflies, sealing her and him into a world of dewy grass and twilight where her skin tingled and her body melted. ‘It’s the first time. Just the first time.’
‘The first time,’ she agreed. Fears slithered away, taking all those hurtful old images with them. This was the first time. And it was amazing.