A Hundred Pieces of Me (6 page)

She stopped, the box in her hand. She had no cupboards or visitors. She was the only person here, so why save the candle for someone else when it had been given to
her
?

Before she could think too hard about it, Gina slid the glass jar out of the box and put it on the windowsill, the only clear flat space in the flat. Then she lit it. After a moment or two, the pale blue scent of hyacinths began to fill the room: the spicy-crisp smell of the chilly winter months before spring broke through the greyness.

Chapter Three

ITEM
: The Marras T-shirt, student union tour, 1996

Oxford, 1996

Georgina is having the best night of her life so far, and it’s only just gone ten.

She glances from side to side before taking a covert swig from Naomi’s dad’s hip-flask, then realises that no one’s going to tell her not to. No one’s watching, and no one cares that she’s two years under the legal drinking age; everyone around her is either drunk, or on something, or snogging someone, or all three. She fizzes inside with an exhilaration that has nothing to do with the vodka and everything to do with the music pounding through her, and takes another large gulp, which burns her throat, but she grimaces and swallows.

Naomi says vodka doesn’t taste of anything but Georgina isn’t so sure. Not that she’s going to say anything. Mixed with the hormones and sweat in the air, compressed by the low, dark ceiling of this student-union function room, it tastes of liquid headache, but it’s going to have to do, because even with Naomi’s kohl eyeliner on, she still has a nervous suspicion that they look under-age and, anyway, they only have enough money for the bus back to Naomi’s brother’s student halls where they’re crashing for the night.

So, technically, this
is
a university visit. It’s just to the student union, not to the library, as she assured her mother and Terry.

And it’s brilliant. Gina has the feeling she should be scared, but she’s not. Or if she is, it’s a good kind of scared.

‘This’s the most amazing night ’f my life,’ Naomi slurs, grabbing her arm. Her eyes are shining with the intense joy that Georgina knows will turn into intense weeping in about thirty minutes, and this is just the support act. The Marras, whose album Gina has listened to about a million times, aren’t even on for another hour. ‘You were so right about us coming here!’

‘Thanks!’ Georgina yells back, pleased.

Something she wouldn’t say, even to Naomi: when she’s listening to music, Georgina imagines the interesting person she’s going to be when she finally gets to university. Here. Two more years – six terms, five A levels – and she’ll get the chance to be someone new. Georgina Bellamy had a brace, and prefect’s tie.
Gina
Bellamy is a writer. An actress. She has a fringe, sexy boots and mystique.

Naomi giggles. ‘Georgina, you’re so . . .’

‘Gina,’ says Georgina, firmly. ‘Gina.’

‘What?’ Naomi looks like she might be about to give her the bit of her mind that remains after half a hip-flask of vodka but at that moment the band launches into the one song the audience has heard of, a cover of ‘Heroes’: they’re not stupid enough to end on one of their own. Georgina and Naomi are shoved forward by the crush of sweating bodies.

Naomi squeals, somewhere in the distance, but Georgina closes her eyes and lets the music wash through her, the beat vibrating and booming outside and inside her body, like she’s not even there. She feels weightless, lifted by the force of the crowd as the band powers through the verse. Then the key shifts, like a huge car changing gear, and the whole room tips over into the chorus, bouncing, yelling, pushing. Georgina’s lips form the words, but the music is so loud she can’t hear her own voice; she can sense, not hear, everyone else singing and it makes her feel tearful. A wave of pure drunken happiness drowns her as she smiles blindly into the darkness pulsing behind her eyelids, stinging with sweat and smeary mascara.

When she does open her eyes, her dry lips parted ready to sing the chorus, he’s looking straight into her face. A boy (man?) with longish blond curly hair, like an angel’s, and wide-set blue eyes that shine with the same dazed pleasure as hers. His black T-shirt’s damp, his face is sheeny with sweat – everyone’s is, so many bodies packed together – and she can smell the heat from his body. It’s a sharp male smell, dangerous and exciting.

‘“We could be heroes,”’ Georgina sings, and it comes out towards him. He smiles and she blushes hotly. Hotter. But she’s not embarrassed. Not even slightly. This is an entirely new feeling. Georgina is embarrassed at least five times a day: by her stepdad, her ‘exemplary’ grades, her neurotic mother’s constant notes to the head, her shoes. She never has the right shoes.

They stare into each other’s faces and Georgina has the weirdest feeling that she’s known him from somewhere before. His face isn’t new to her. She feels like she’s arrived somewhere she’s been heading for all her life. It’s intensely comforting and freaky at the same time.

The crowd are squeezing them closer, and her heart is beating in her throat. They’re still singing, but he’s leaning closer and, without warning, as the guitar solo soars over their heads, he shouts, ‘Kit!’ right in her ear, and there’s a sharp tug inside, as if a giant fish hook has landed in her chest. For a second Georgina wonders if she’s
actually
hurt, and puts a hand up in surprise.

He grabs it, and cups it to his ear, trying to mime ‘Tell me your name.’ The skin of her arm goosebumps at the sensation of his fingers round her wrist. She shouts, ‘Gina!’

Her voice is drowned, however, by a roar rumbling down from the front. Hard elbows jab in her back, and Gina turns to see a massive rugby-player surfing across the raised hands, upside-down and so close she can smell the beer on his breath, the acrid sweat on his T-shirt. His eyes lock on hers as he crashes nearer, his fist out-stretched like Superman. It’s aiming straight for her head.

Gina panics, but she’s trapped by the crush of bodies around her, arms pinned to her sides. All she can think as he hurtles towards her is, Mum. How’m I going to explain being in hospital to Mum?

She opens her mouth to scream as the boy – Kit – grabs her by the belt of her jeans and drags her away with surprising strength. Gina feels eighteen stones of solid prop forward brush past her shoulder and slam into the lads next to her. The whooping crowd bends away like a field of corn, pushing her into Kit’s arms, but before Gina can register the sensation of his skin against hers, hot and intimate in the general crush, it moves back again, and she’s shoved into a stranger’s side, half-lifting her off her feet. By the time she gets her balance on the slippery floor, another surge has surrounded her in a thick forest of strangers. Black T-shirts and clammy backs and a communal body odour, dark under the aftershave and deodorant.

She looks but Kit’s gone. Adrenalin – and disappointment and vodka – rakes her body so hard she wants to cry.

Gina’s foot feels wet and she realises she’s lost her slip-on pump. Naomi’s nowhere to be seen, and she needs the loo. The spell’s broken. Close to tears, she fights her way out of the audience to the back of the hall.

The few cool people hanging at the back ignore her. Gina stands there with ringing ears, one sock sodden with spilled beer. Then, just at the moment she most wants to go home, Kit appears out of the thicket of the audience, with a shoe in his hand. He doesn’t see her at first, and Gina has the luxury of watching him looking for her, his blond hair hanging damply in his eyes. Then he spots her, and his anxious expression turns to a smile. Gina holds her breath as he approaches.

‘Cinderella, I presume?’ He offers her the shoe.

‘Gina,’ she says, taking it. It’s not the one she lost, but she doesn’t care. It’s roughly the right size and her foot’s soaking. Why let a small detail like that spoil the moment?

‘Hang on.’ Kit frowns as she tries to force her heel in. ‘
Is
that yours?’

‘Near enough,’ she says. They’re both talking too loudly; she assumes his ears are buzzing like hers. ‘Well, no. To be honest, it’s not.’ She smiles apologetically. ‘And I’m not Cinderella.’

He laughs, and turns back to the crowd, only just thinning out as the band milk the applause. ‘Look, it’ll be in there somewhere, we can find it once this lot have finished.’

We. We can go and find it.

‘Can you hop as far as the bar? If I help you?’ Kit’s blue eyes are dark when he looks at her, and Gina has the sudden thrilling sensation that he feels exactly the same way she does. As if she could climb right inside him, as if everything else in this crowded room is slightly blurry in comparison with his sharp outline.

She nods. He grabs her hand and Gina lets Kit lead her to the five-deep bar where the student serving waves at him and makes a ‘Drink?’ gesture. His hand is warm and damp and grips hers tightly, ostensibly so they don’t become separated in the crowd, but there’s no crowd where they’re standing and he only lets go to collect the beers.

They take their drinks to a quieter corner and before Gina can even worry about what they’re going to talk about, they’re talking. About the band, about her lost shoe, about the bar, about their favourite music, about the amazing coincidence that Kit’s mates with Naomi’s brother, Shaun. His amused blue eyes never leave her face, and Gina feels as if she’s been here before, as if they’ve known each other all their lives.

They have another beer, and discover they both love Nick Drake, and are left-handed, and always wanted a cat but were never allowed one. And the headliners arrive but Kit and Gina are still talking in the dark corner of the bar, the space between them slowly disappearing. She only hears The Marras in the distance, but that’s fine. It’s as if they’re playing in a corner of her bedroom.

This is the best night of my life, she thinks, light-headed with a funny serene happiness that makes her feels as if she’s floating like a helium balloon over the crowd of dancers. Nothing will ever feel better than this.

And it’s not even midnight.

To get to her mother’s home in Hartley, Gina had to drive past 7 Church Lane, the house Janet had coveted for as long as they’d lived in the area.

It was the handsomest house on a road of handsome houses – 1930s mock-Tudor detached, all clean black-and-white half-timbering, with flowerbeds edging a velvety lawn, and a cherry tree in exactly the right spot in the garden, poised like a flattering hat on a beautiful face. As if to mark it out as the best house in the row, a red postbox was set into the brick wall outside the sunburst wrought-iron gate, the GR monogram picked out in gold.

G for Gina, she used to think as a teenager, ever monitoring her surroundings for Signs. R for who? It had made her tingle with anticipation and a bit of dread, that her R was out there, but might not find her in boring Hartley.

Janet used to swivel in the passenger seat of Terry’s brown Rover P6 as they drove past, but at the same time as her eyes were clearly drinking in 7 Church Lane’s domestic perfection, she insisted she had no interest in being ‘the sort of person who is that obsessed with their lawn – it takes a lot of work, keeping it up, a real burden’. As an adolescent, from her slumped position in the back seat (in case anyone from school saw her out in Terry’s ancient car), Gina had secretly mouthed along in unison with her mother’s observations. Even now Janet’s voice was permanently connected with the geography of the drive back home – the apple tree that should be cut back, the conservatory that would be better with a sloping roof. Once or twice, Terry had caught Gina’s eye in the rear-view mirror, the twinkle in his expression offering a gentle solidarity with Janet’s self-delusion, and Gina had felt a funny mixture of guilt and relief that made her drop her gaze, even though part of her wanted to grin back. Maybe even roll her eyes.

It was unsettling to see that flash of a different man, not because there was anything remotely sinister about Terry and his sandy moustache and sensible shoes, but because it was too complicated to think of him as an actual person with a sense of humour. When he was boring-sales-rep Terry, he fitted into the tortuous equation of loyalty and resentment she’d worked out, a system of concessions and balances that allowed her to miss her real handsome, heroic dad, while also being not ungrateful to the man who’d stepped in to fill an unenviable gap. Acknowledging Terry’s realness also meant contemplating the relationship he had with her mother, and – hard as it was to imagine her mother having any truck with the sort of unhygienic activity Gina read about in Naomi’s eye-opening magazines – that made her want to die of squeamishness.

As an adult, driving down the road Terry’s P6 must have covered thousands of times in their endless family round of school, work, ‘runs out’ and shopping, Gina wished she’d smiled back. Poor Terry was just trying to build some bridges, in his diplomatic way. She felt sorry for him, then even sorrier, because her mother
still
wished they’d cut the apple tree back outside the vicarage, and she understood a little more of what Terry had put up with all those years.

Today 7 Church Lane’s borders were full of early daffodils, a cheerful splash of colour in the wintry sunshine.Gina paused outside the house to let another car past, and cast her critical housing planner’s eye over the freshly whitewashed exterior. Though she loved old properties, 7 Church Lane didn’t do much for her. There was so much twee period detail inside and out that you had to live by its rules, and she knew it was much darker and smaller inside than you’d think. One of those houses that’s nicer to look at from outside, than to live in. Maybe that was why Mum wanted it, she thought, then batted the mean thought away as she set off again.