Another Life Altogether (37 page)

I looked at her, mouth agape. Just over twenty-four hours ago, she’d been on the verge of swallowing several dozen pills, and now here she was telling me she’d never felt better, as if that moment in the bathroom had never taken place. I imagined myself holding on to the rear bumper of a wildly careening car, a fool for thinking I might slow a speeding vehicle or prevent it from colliding with whatever was in the way.

“I’ll have to take a lot of this plaster down,” she said, pointing at the crumbling ceiling. “And that window frame needs replacing as well. Of course, I’ll have to put a carpet in. But I already know what color scheme I’m using. I’m going to do burgundy walls with a light red on the woodwork. And I’ll make some nice purple curtains and a matching bedspread. I’ll see if I can get a nice red carpet as well. What do you think?”

“Sounds nice.” Actually, I was more than a little dubious about the
aesthetic merits of a room done entirely in shades of red and purple, but I’d long given up on either of my parents exhibiting even the tiniest skill in interior decorating. And, if it was going to help her remain in her present mood, that was fine with me.

“I know our Ted will love it,” my mother continued, gazing dreamily up at the blotchy ceiling. “Men like strong colors. And I bet those prisons aren’t exactly painted nice and bright. This’ll cheer him up. And if he’s going to be here in a few weeks, then I’d better get started right away.”

After that, my mother engaged herself in a whirlwind of activity. She managed to change out of her nightclothes, but now she wore the same paint-spattered slacks and oversized shirt every day. (I suspected that she also slept in this outfit, but since she never went to bed until after I’d gone to sleep and was up before I ventured out of my bedroom in the mornings I couldn’t be sure.) She stopped watching television altogether; instead, she hummed the tunes of songs sung by Engelbert Humperdinck, Tom Jones, and Perry Como while she knocked down the ceiling, banged away at the window frame, and hauled bags of plaster up the stairs.

While I was pleased that my father’s decision to invite Ted to stay with us had energized my mother, I wasn’t convinced that this was my father’s best plan. Ted, after all, was not known for his stabilizing influence on anyone. And, after hearing Mabel’s anecdote about his stealing her neighbor’s television, I wondered if having him here was really worth the risk. For the first time, I found some consolation in the fact that our house was in the middle of nowhere, with no neighbors nearby at all. Perhaps without those kinds of temptations Ted would behave himself. I decided to cling firmly to this flimsy hope.

D
URING THE REST OF THE CHRISTMAS HOLIDAYS, WHILE MY MOTHER
was consumed with fixing up the spare bedroom, I was equally consumed by a need to write my letters to Amanda. Fueled now by my certainty that she returned my feelings, I felt compelled to compose ever-longer and more elaborate stories about our imagined adventures. Everything that I had been holding back spilled out onto the page. After all, if Amanda felt the same way that I did, I didn’t need to feel ashamed or guilty about anything I wrote. Even if we would have to hide our feelings from the rest of the world, together, secretly, we could revel in them. I would no longer worry that I was the only girl who was in love with another girl. By the time school started, I had almost filled my biscuit tin with letters and I’d tied them in a tight fat bundle, folded neatly and sorted in chronological order. Sometimes I’d pull them out and reread them, and sometimes I’d simply sit on my bed and hold them, as if their collective weight was proof of something solid, something I could rely on when everything else seemed in flux.

It was still dark when I awoke that first morning of the new term. When I peered out my window, the world below was silent, silvered and furred with frost. When I’d fallen asleep the night before, my mother had still been working in the spare bedroom, but now I could
hear her snores along with my father’s. I was relieved to know that she was at least getting some sleep. As I made my way downstairs after washing and dressing, I heard the harsh ring of my father’s alarm clock and his angry muttering as he fumbled to turn it off. In the kitchen, I made tea and a big pan of porridge for both of us, but before my father had even made it downstairs I was out the door.

I was ridiculously early for the bus that morning, arriving in the village almost half an hour before it was due to arrive. Of course, I expected to be the first one there. No one else in their right mind would want to stand outside in such fearsome cold. So I was surprised when I turned the corner onto the high street and saw someone standing by the bus stop. I was utterly thrilled when, as I drew closer, I realized it was Amanda.

“Hiya, Jesse,” she called, giving me an enthusiastic wave.

“Hiya,” I said, my heart pounding as I neared.

“God, I’m glad you’re here,” she said as I reached the bus stop. “It’s bloody freezing this morning.” She gave a shudder and wrapped her arms about her. “But I wanted to see you before our Tracey comes.”

“You did?” My heart raced and my stomach flipped. It was as much as I could do to stop myself from throwing my arms around her neck.

“I just had to tell you something.” She stamped her feet, in part to keep herself warm, it seemed, and partly out of excitement. Her face, ablaze with the cold, was intensely animated. “But first you have to swear to keep it a secret.”

I knew that I’d been right. That kiss really had meant that she cared about me. What else would she want to talk to me about in secret? And why else would she brave this bone-chilling cold to make sure she could be alone with me?

“I won’t tell anybody,” I said.

“Not even Tracey.” She looked at me intently. “Especially not Tracey.”

“Especially not Tracey,” I said. Of course, I knew this was one thing I could never share with her.

Amanda frowned, studying my face for a moment, and then, apparently satisfied with the sincerity she found there, she pulled a wide, beaming smile. “All right,” she said, grabbing my arm and pulling me toward her. I felt loose, boneless, in her grasp. “I want to show you something.” As I stood close, delighting in her delicious presence, she began rifling about in one of the pockets of her coat. Then she pulled out a little box, struggled with one of her gloved hands to open it, and finally lifted the lid to show a gold locket set in the middle of a velvet cushion. “So, what do you think?” She held it a few inches away from my face.

“It’s lovely,” I said. It was heart-shaped, delicate, the kind of locket you’d give to someone you loved.

“Isn’t it gorgeous?” she said. “Here.” She thrust it into my gloved hand.

This was far more than I could even have hoped for. A gift like this said more than anyone could ever put into words. “It’s … It’s beautiful.” I said, almost breathless. “Thank you.” Then I threw my arms around her, pushed my face into hers, and planted a kiss on her lips.

I had written this a hundred times. In this delicious moment when I pulled Amanda to me, we wrapped our arms around each other, pressed our bodies close so that only the fabric of our clothes separated us, and our mouths melted together in a long heat-filled kiss.

But that wasn’t what happened. Instead of feeling limp and eager in my arms, Amanda seemed a column of stiffness, and rather than returning my kiss gratefully, as soon as I put my lips against hers she shoved me away.

“Jesse! What the hell are you doing?”

I staggered back. She had pushed me hard. I looked at her face—her eyes were bright with outrage, her lips twisted into a tight, revolted knot. As if instinctively wiping away dirt from her lips, she wiped her hand back and forth across her mouth. I watched her and felt the earth tilt, as if all gravity were gone and I was falling sideways, my head veering toward the ground.

“What the bloody hell was that about?” she demanded. “I just wanted to show you what Stan got me.”

I looked at the box, still sitting in my hand. “It’s from Stan?” I asked, still unable to find my balance, my heartbeat a drum pounding inside my ears. I didn’t understand. Amanda was finished with Stan. Only a couple of weeks ago she had kissed me. And now, when I tried to kiss her, she had hurled me away in horror.

“Yeah. What did you think?” Her forehead was wrinkled into a ferocious rippling question, then it suddenly smoothed. “Oh my God, you thought that I … you thought that you and me … you thought that when I kissed you …” Her expression changed and, instead of looking horrified she let out a loud, jagged laugh. It was a white cloud in the morning’s freezing air.

A solid, sickening realization fell over me: that kiss she had placed on my lips after the disco was nothing more than a drunken gesture of gratitude. I was an idiot to imagine that it had been anything else.

“No, no, I didn’t think that….” I was scrambling, flailing with words. “I just thought that maybe you had got the locket for me, and that was stupid.” I let out a hollow laugh. “But I didn’t think…. Of course, I didn’t think
that.”
My face was on fire, and my entire body was made of nothing more than hot liquid. Inside, I was boiling with shame.

Amanda studied my face for a moment, her brows knotted. I dropped my gaze to stare hopelessly at the ground. I knew what was coming next. I could already hear her taunts of “Lezzie, lezzie, lezzie,” echoing down the high street, through all the quiet streets of the village for everyone else to hear.

“So you like it, then?” Amanda asked.

“What?”

“The locket, you like the locket?”

I looked up and met her eyes. In them, green and dazzling and as beautiful as ever, I saw that she knew my secret. She knew exactly how I felt. “I’m sorry, Amanda, I—”

She shrugged. “Forget it, Jesse.”

“I didn’t mean to—”

“I said forget it.” Her voice was firm.

I stood there, unsure if the ground beneath me was solid. I took a breath. “So you got back together with Stan, then?” I tried to make my voice sound light, to suppress the tears I felt rising. “That’s great.” I forced my lips into the curve of a smile.

“Yeah.” She nodded vaguely. “Yeah,” she repeated, this time more brightly. “He felt really, really bad about the accident. So after he got his bike fixed he rode all the way down to Cleethorpes to see me.”

“That’s nice. It’s a long way down to Cleethorpes,” I said, my voice too loud and oddly boisterous.

“He said he was ever so sorry, and then he gave me the locket and begged me to take him back. He must have spent a lot of money on it.” She took the box holding the locket from my hand. “Shame I can’t wear it, really.”

“Why not?”

“Well, I don’t want my dad to see it. He’d go bloody nuts.”

“Why?”

She sighed. “He’s always on at me, anyway. But this, well, he wouldn’t approve of a lad giving me something like that.”

“Oh, but you should wear it. And if the chain’s long enough you can just hide it under your blouse.” I was stunned, even as I spoke, at what I was saying. It was as if my words had stopped being my own. But now I had to stuff all my feelings deep inside me, prove to Amanda that what she had glimpsed of me really wasn’t there.

“You think so?”

“If you like, I’ll help you put it on.”

Amanda hesitated, tilting her head and looking at me, as if trying to discern something in my face.

“Really,” I said. “It’s no trouble.”

“It is a bit fiddly, Jesse,” she said, her tone cautious. “Maybe you should leave it.”

“No, really, you should wear it.” I was determined to do this. It was a test I had set myself. “I’ll just take my gloves off—that’ll make it easier.” I removed my gloves and stuffed them into my pockets while Amanda, apparently convinced now, took the locket from the box. She handed it to me.

It was cold and surprisingly weightless in my palm. For a moment, I had the urge to close my fist around it, pull my arm back, and hurl the stupid locket into the air, across the high street, and through the bare branches of the trees into the fields beyond. I imagined myself doing this and then turning to look at Amanda, fire burning in my eyes. Then I’d tell her that I didn’t care if it meant that I was a lezzie but I loved her and she was a fool for not realizing that my love meant so much more than Stan’s.

I didn’t throw the locket away, though. Instead, I unclasped the chain, reached up, and put it around Amanda’s neck. When I’d fastened the locket, she pulled back. “Oh, I forgot to show you,” she said, struggling for a moment and then popping the locket open. Inside, there was a little heart-shaped picture of Stan Heaphy. He grinned out at me from that place on Amanda’s chest.