Chapter 8
MAGGIE
Jack is shrugging off his jacket while on screen Mary Stewart Masterson, our heroine, holds her drumsticks in red leather biker gloves and pounds on the drums as the eighties intro music starts.
I sneak a glance at him as he folds his jacket, placing it on the seat beside him.
He’s wearing cufflinks. Actual cufflinks.
I’ve never seen anyone wear cufflinks in my life.
They catch the reflection from the screen as he settles back into his seat.
My encounters with the opposite sex have been few and far between. It’s hard to build a relationship with someone when you have a running commentary to their thoughts as they kiss you.
Jared Hill behind the bike sheds at school:
How long do I have to kiss her before I go for her tits?
Not long, as it turned out.
Joseph Simm in the common room:
She tastes like cheese and onion crisps.
Rude considering he tasted like cigarettes and garlic.
Pip Finnegan, while snogging me at the school disco to ‘My Heart Will Go On’:
This will get Clara’s attention.
Is she looking?
Yes! I’ll grab her ass… What’s her name again?
It did get Clara’s attention, and ruined Titanic for me forever.
And then there was Luke.
I met Luke in the supermarket. Not exactly Richard Curtis levels of meet-cute, but when his bag broke, and tins of tomatoes and sweetcorn careered along the aisles, I helped pick them up.
He was kind, funny, liked to cook, and he was patient.
With me. But that was all before I found out, just six months later, that he thought it was perfectly fine to shag someone else behind my back.
That was one of those moments when I was both resentful of yet thankful for my gift.
The first time I heard thoughts, I didn’t realise that what I was experiencing was different.
I knew my parents had died, that they had gone out in a car and that it took my parents to heaven, but I think I was too young to grasp the concept of death.
When I revisit my first memory, when I try to unpick it, I remember a deep sense of confusion.
There is the image of a small house with a cherry tree in the garden.
But no matter how many times I try to imagine opening the door, and stepping inside to where my early memories are hidden, I get no further.
There are no images of the family I was once part of.
Nothing but a locked door with ivy growing around the porch.
My first real memory is of Grandma sitting on a pale blue sofa.
The sun was streaming in through the windows.
It was a warm day, I had a red polka-dot dress on, and my hair was in pigtails.
There was an ice-cream truck outside playing ‘Greensleeves’.
It was a happy day and Grandma was smiling when I asked if I could have an ice-cream.
I don’t remember the journey from the sitting room to the pavement, but I remember her hand taking hold of mine.
She was smiling, her eyes were kind, but then I heard her:
What am I going to do with her?
She doesn’t belong here with me.
I’m too old.
Too frail.
But she was smiling, she bought me an extra flake and strawberry sauce. It was a sunny day and children were laughing, and I was happy because I had an ice-cream.
‘Aren’t I staying with you, Grandma?’ I’d asked.
‘Of course you are! I will always be here for you. Now how about I take you to the park?’
It was the first time I realised that what people say and what they think are two very different things.
Grandma put me into the care system by the time I was five and a half.
The last time I saw her, she had held my shoulders and told me to never tell people that I can hear them thinking. It was the first time the words in her mouth matched the words shouting in her head:
They won’t understand.
You’ll never fit in.
So dating, to me, is something that happens mostly in a world created and compacted within the four corners of a movie screen, all high-definition, professionally chosen outfits, make-up dusted along cheekbones.
The dates that play out behind that secret, pixelated screen are filled with witty one-liners or awkward silences, where the characters say exactly what they mean.
And when the hero doesn’t go off shagging people behind the heroine’s back.
And I know this isn’t technically a date, and that we have Henry grinning up at the screen between us, but it’s pretty close.
I shift my focus back to the blonde pixie-cutted drummer.
From the corner of my eye, I see him opening his bag of popcorn, salted not sweet.
I take a long pull through my straw, eyes now focused on a young Eric Stoltz walking along the train tracks, daring the train to get closer to him before he steps safely away. I side-eye Jack.
‘You’re smiling,’ I find myself saying, eyes back on the screen.
‘I am.’ He throws a piece of popcorn into his mouth. ‘I like the metaphor.’
‘Metaphor?’
Jack nods to the screen. ‘Yeah, wrong side of the tracks?’ He glances in my direction.
‘Low income, thinks he’s setting his sights too high?
’ I nod. ‘Classic. Classic character archetype. A’ – he frowns in frustration for a second before composing himself and continuing – ‘a main character, who sees himself as extremely average, but is better-looking and more talented than he thinks. He wants more from life, right?’ To prove his point, on the screen Eric aka Keith is looking at his oil-stained hands while his crush, Amanda Jones, is getting it on with the rich popular guy in the background.
There is something in the way he is looking at the screen, an excitement that – God this is going to sound soooo naff – lights him up from the inside.
‘But also, sexy,’ I add. He coughs on his intake of lemonade.
‘You think he’s sexy?’ Jack gestures to the screen with his paper cup, straw sticking out.
‘Eric Stoltz?’ I fold my arms and lean back. ‘Yep. I should say that he’s not actually a teenager. He was in his twenties when they filmed this.’
‘Huh.’ He seems to assess the man on the screen.
‘What about you?’ I bring the straw to my lips.
‘Me?’
‘No, Henry.’ I roll my eyes. ‘Yes you, I’m-not-Jack. Who tickles your fancy, the popular girl or the drummer?’
He laughs, deep and slow. ‘Tickles my fancy?’ He raises an eyebrow.
‘Yeah, which leading lady floats your boat?’
‘My boat?’ That slow smile again.
‘Watts or Amanda Jones?’
‘Amanda Jones. Isn’t that a Rolling Stones song?’
‘Yes, and stop avoiding the question.’
‘Amanda is the mum from Back to the Future?’
‘You still haven’t answered the question. Blonde, brunette, or are you a redhead kind of guy?’
He frowns, as though he’s thought of something, but then he smirks. ‘I don’t know yet. I need to see if I like their personalities.’
‘Smooth,’ I say shaking my head. ‘Very smooth.’
We’re both smiling as we return our attention to the screen. Conversation passes easily between us as the film continues, our voices raised above the eighties nostalgia.
‘Is it weird to be nostalgic for a time you weren’t even born in?’ I ask, taking in the lack of phones and social media as the family eat around the table. He looks across Henry at me.
‘I don’t think so… There’s something…’
‘Innocent?’
‘Yes, but it’s more than that, isn’t it? It’s like being nostalgic for a life that can never be yours. I guess there is a sense of safety around wanting something you know you can’t fail at. We’re never going to be teenagers in the eighties.’
There is a vulnerability around his words. What could this ridiculously attractive, intelligent and funny man have failed at?
I recall what he said earlier: Tonight, I’m supposed to be somewhere I didn’t want to be, surrounded by people I didn’t want to talk to. I do, however, very much like talking to you.
‘I get that,’ he says, attention back on the scene playing out where Keith is rebelling about his father’s pressure for him to go to college.
School is hard enough, but by the time I was seven, I had already been to more schools than I could count. My uniforms were often second-hand, and I would be told that I looked nice and smart, while hearing the opposite.
I would try to fit in with friendship groups and they would smile and laugh at something I had said, while thinking that I was weird.
My first school disco was when I was six.
One of the older girls in the group home let me use her make-up and lent me a dress.
It was bright blue, but two sizes too big, so I had used the belt I wore to keep my school trousers from falling down.
I tried to disguise it by wrapping tinfoil around the leather.
Looking back, I’m sure I must have looked a right sight, but I had perfume and make-up on, red shiny lips, silver belt, and I’d pinned two heart-shaped badges on my shoes to try and hide that they were my school ones.
‘You look amazing!’
Oh bless her, poor thing.
‘Where did you get those shoes? They’re super cute!’
Oh. My. God.
Does she really think we can’t tell they’re her tatty school ones?
‘You smell so nice!’
She smells like Mum’s disinfectant.
But then a year later, Hellie took me in, and the next school disco I went to, I had a whole new outfit on. It was a white dress with daisies on and my feet were slipped into sunshine-yellow sandals. Not a scrap of tinfoil to be seen. Tess and I had danced the Macarena and Cha-Cha Slide together.
Jack slurps the last of his drink, with a grimace, apologising.
‘Your parents put you under pressure?’ I ask.
He shakes his head.
‘No. I put myself under that pressure.’
‘Why?’
‘I guess, I didn’t want to let them down. My brother and sister were head girl, head boy, captain of the football team, and I, well, I wasn’t.’
‘Did they care? Your parents?’
He laughs and shakes his head. ‘No. Not really.’
‘So why put that pressure on yourself?’
‘I didn’t want to fail.’ There is that word again, ‘fail’. ‘How about you?’ he asks, smoothing over the unspoken conversation.
‘Zero expectations. Oh, here’s my favourite scene.
’ I shift my legs so that the hole in my fishnets, is facing away from Jack.
I’m suddenly very aware of Jack’s presence as the music builds up and they begin kissing.
I keep my eyes fixed on the screen and try to ignore the thoughts rushing through my mind of what it would feel like for him to kiss me like that, to have that kind of connection.
I hazard a brief look at Jack, but his face is unreadable as he focuses on the screen. ‘Just nipping to the loo,’ I explain, gathering myself and leaving the room. ‘I’ll check the doors too.’
‘Want me to come with you?’ he asks then chews the corner of his mouth, ‘to check the door, not to the loo.’
‘I’m good,’ I reply and hurry from the room.
In front of the mirror, I take in my appearance. Cheeks flushed, eyes bright. I wash my hands, give my underarms a quick sniff. Passable. I rearrange my boobs. The elastic in my bra gave up a long time ago, but it was either a new bra or a replacement dust bag for Henry.
‘What are you doing, Mags?’ I shake my head recalling his words: There is a sense of safety around wanting something you know you can’t fail at.
I can already feel myself stepping towards the threshold of tomorrow. I imagine it will feel something like homesickness.
I check the doors. They don’t budge.
I smile.