Game Girls (16 page)

Fern has heard of Brighton and in her head
she sees pictures of beaches. A pier. 'That's by
the sea, isn't it?'

'Yeah.'

Sussex Sussex Sussex. She'll have to
remember.

'I love the sea. The river. Even though water
scares me sometimes, I still can't bear to be
away from it for long.'

'Scares you?' He does look at her now,
asking gently, 'How does it scare you?'

She worries that he'll think she's stupid if
she starts going on about her dog dreams and
the mud figures all sucked down by the
undertow. 'Oh – just because I can't swim. I
tried to learn once but I panicked and after that
it just didn't happen.'

She knows he can swim because Alix talked
about them racing in the pool at her mum's
villa the other week, and she waits for him to
say something else, but he doesn't.

'Are . . . are you going back to . . . to Surrey
tomorrow, do you think?' She has tried to make
this sound like nothing, a light shower of empty
words, but it comes out weighted. A dropped
stone.

He grins at her. 'It's Sussex. And I don't
know yet.'

Fern feels herself tense up, almost jolt. This
could be it. He might be going to make a move
on her now – maybe that's why he doesn't
know what he's doing. He needs to know what
she's going to say. Her hand strays to the silk
fringe of the pashmina, plucking at the tassles.

The moment ripples outwards. She could
lose it. It might ebb away. 'What would you do
if you didn't go? Back. Tomorrow, I mean.'

He grins again. 'Annoy Alix. Sleep on in the
morning. No one should surface before lunch
time on a Sunday unless there's some pressing
need, like football practice.'

'Don't you sleep on when you're at
university then?' Fern realises she is gabbling
about nothing but she can't help it. She's scared
that he
will
ask to see her, and scared that he
won't.

He makes an odd noise – a humph. 'Sadly I
don't get the chance. It's the girls. They get all
heated about things like their best bra going
missing or whatever, and they seem to think the
whole house should hear about it.'

'The girls?' Fern makes herself focus on a
collection of glass sculptures that edge the
pond, graceful green stems washed in a fan of
light. Girls. He lives with girls.

'There's four of us – three girls and me.'

'Oh – right.' Three girls. Three girls living
with Aaron.

A waiter approaches, seeming to glide along
the grass towards them. 'Madam?' he bows
slightly, the tray held immobile. Fern realises her
strawberry cocktail is finished. She hands him
the glass, and takes a fresh one. Is it orange this
time? She isn't sure. Colours always look
different in the dark.

'Sir?' The waiter turns to Aaron, bowing
again.

Aaron waves him away with the hand that
isn't stretched behind Fern's back. 'Thank you,
but no. I'm driving,' he says.

The waiter glides away again.

Fern sips the cocktail. It's more lemony than
orange. She sips it again; for courage, she
thinks. 'Are they pretty?' Bits of tassle have
been pulled away from the pashmina and she
brushes them down from her lap.

'Sorry?'

'The girls you live with. Are they pretty?'

Her mouth is fixed in a small growling smile
and she struggles to soften it.

'I'm not sure. I don't really look at them in
that way.' She senses a slight movement of his
shoulder, a shrug. She thinks, relieved, that he
doesn't sound interested in them. He doesn't
sound as if he's even thought about it.

And then he says, 'In fact, you can decide
for yourself. Here's one of them now. Oh hey,
Daisy – what's up?'

Fern looks round as a slim girl, porcelain
pale and in a long red dress, weaves unsteadily
towards them. Or at least she thinks the dress
is red. Colours look different in the dark.

'Aaron. Thank God I've found you.' Daisy
drops – collapses – onto the bench bedside him.

'Hey now – what's happened? Come on.
Talk to me.'

Fern feels his arm move away from the back
of the bench, his body turned from her now,
focusing on Daisy. She shifts position, moving
forward and tilting her head to see round his
back, her small growling smile forcing out a
sympathy that no one is even noticing.

Daisy has her fists clenched and is pressing
them up against her eyes. Aaron reaches
forward, taking both hands and drawing them
down gently into her lap.

'Come on. Tell me. Tell me.'

His voice is so tender. Fern feels the wrench
of very word.

She stays smiling.

Stays sympathetic.

'He isn't interested. I thought he was at first
– but then he just seemed to drop me. I think
he fancies someone else.'

Aaron pulls her towards him, cradling her.
'Then he's nothing but a rat. A skunk. A
disgusting slur on the face of all mankind.'

Daisy giggles, opening her eyes and sniffing up
at Aaron. 'A cesspit in the stagnant pond of life.'

Aaron hugs her tighter. 'A foul gush of slime
in the sewer of time.'

They are both laughing now, rocking
together.

Fern feels shrivelled. She could never play
these games of words.

'Look – I've got an idea. You don't have to
risk his boiled blisters for eyes seeing you like
this. We could head off somewhere – drive
through this dark and velvet night, and find an
enchanted land where all the Princes will be
lined up waiting for you.' He turns to Fern, as
if he has suddenly remembered she is there.
'I've got to get Daisy away, and I don't know if
I'll make it back to pick you ladies up. So use
this for a taxi . . . ' He wrestles in his back
pocket and pulls out a wad of notes. 'Alix must
be around somewhere. And the other girl. See
if you can find them – and tell Alix I'm sorry.
I'll call her tomorrow.'

He is already standing, Daisy swaying
against him. She doesn't even look at Fern.

Together they melt away into the evening.

Fern stays slumped on the bench, the
pashmina lopsided now, swigging back the
orange that-is-probably-lemon cocktail. She
stares at the pond with its lit-up glass ornament
lilies. Insects flicker round them, hovering and
buzzing. She thinks that is the second time in her
life that a bloke has given her money to get rid of
her.

'Another drink, madam?' The voice at her
shoulder makes her look round, the waiter
hovering like an apparition. She forces herself to
move, stretching out the empty orange but-probably-lemon
glass, wobbling it down onto the
tray. The waiter steadies it. She takes another.
Who knows what colour it is? And who cares?

* * *

Courtney is sitting in the garden at a small
painted table, pressed up in a corner under a
tangle of honeysuckle. She hopes no one will
find her.

She has had a few drinks – she's on her third
now – but this fruited cocktail rubbish doesn't
seem to be touching her. A couple of blokes
have come over but she's shrugged them away.
She can't face the idea of empty conversation.
Small talk. Pointless chatter.

Wafts of music drift from up near the house.
There are lights everywhere, small-eyed fairy
lights that squint down from the branches of the
trees.

Courtney thinks it's all so shallow and crass.

She wishes she hadn't agreed to come. Alix
had a big idea about them all getting dolled up
and having a good time being gorgeous
together.

Except Courtney doesn't feel gorgeous. The
black sequined dress she is squeezed into cost a
fortune, and she can't believe she let Alix
persuade her to waste her money on it.

It's not 'her'. This world isn't hers. The
world where she feels happiest is Elroy's world.

When she thinks about Elroy she thinks of
words like 'gentle' and 'clean' and 'honest', and
when she thinks about Alix now, she sometimes
shudders. At school once, years and years ago,
they did Greek mythology, and one of the gods
was a woman with her hair full of snakes.
Courtney remembers the illustration – the face so
innocent and the hair all seething and writhing
and forked with small, venomous tongues.
Medusa. Alix. A beautiful, dangerous, powerful
goddess. Is she being fair?

A breeze whispers in, skimming up and over
the garden from the river. Sipping at the
cocktail she watches the ripples on the water
and thinks about the last three weeks with
Elroy.

Sitting on the beach.

Walking from one end of the promenade to
the other.

Talking endlessly in the Bluebird.

They've got so much to say to each other,
drinking coffee in their favourite shadowed
corner. Elroy is brimful of words – he knows
about art and God and politics and books, and
he opens her up to ideas and questions and
each time she meets him, she goes away feeling
different. Stronger. But they don't always talk.
Sometimes they just sit quietly, looking and
looking and looking at each other, drinking
each other in while the coffee goes cold and
Lofty, the owner, takes it away quietly and gets
them some more.

She loves this limbo existence – they haven't
even been to each other's homes yet – and in
her fantasy she makes it stay that way. No
groping and sweating and panting and pawing
over each other. Just him liking her as a person.
Her liking him.

And there's Mum and Dad too, and the way
she knows they'd be, with their thinly masked
disapproval. She won't subject him to that. She
won't tell him where she lives.

Although she knows it's not exactly the
same for him – he is scared of inviting her back
to his bedsit – he's already told her that. 'It's
not a great area,' he said yesterday, a touch of
anxiety behind his beautiful, incredible smile.
'You might go off me if you saw it.'

It amazes her that he doesn't know how she
feels.

He could live in a cardboard box for all she
cared.

But she didn't press it because being
together in his bedsit might change things in a
way she won't even let herself think about, and
she doesn't want to risk the change.

She sips more of the cocktail and looks back
up towards the grotesquely huge house, where
the 'have it all' people are laughing and
dancing and eyeing each other up. Judging each
other. Comparing. Competing.

Babylon.

That's what Elroy would call it.

If he came here now, walking past the bottom
of the garden with his easel and his pastels, would
he even recognise the glammed-up plastic doll of
a girl sitting staring out across the night. And if he
did recognise her, would he want to know her
anymore?

She's not pretending with him – she's
promised herself she will never do that – but
not mentioning something isn't pretending.
Avoiding. Evading. That's all she's doing. She's
got to be careful. The thought of him thinking
badly about her coils like a snake in her head.
She's got more than a rough area bedsit for him
to find out the truth about. She's got a million
seething secrets to try and hide.

She stands suddenly, emptying what's left of
the drink out onto the grass. Sod it, she's going
home. She'll find Fern and Alix and tell them
she's getting a taxi back.

She doesn't even know how it was that Alix
persuaded her to come.

* * *

Alix is watching Hugh.

She feels as if she knows where he is, even
when she can't see him. It's as if she's developed
a kind of radar, sensing his position at any
point in the room.

He had a different girl with him earlier. The
Limpet who clung on to him in The Dress
Agency has clearly been prised away. Tonight's
one seemed gentler, and nicer. She looked
lovely too, all dolled up in a slinky red dress,
which was doubly annoying. It's going be a
major barrier if Hugh is with someone he
genuinely likes.

Alix isn't sure where Little Miss Lovely is
now, but no doubt she'll be back. She's not
going to leave her catch unattended for long.

She makes murmured conversation with
strangers who want to know her name. What
she does. Who she knows, and how.

'Cocktail, madam?' She takes a drink from
the waiter's tray, and sips it thoughtfully. At
least she doesn't have to worry about it being
spiked in here.

She thinks it must be fantastic to be able to
take a house like this for granted. Rooms
draped with velvet and silk, sparkling crystal
chandeliers, arched windows and marble
statues set in alcoves in the wall.

When she looks up Hugh has slipped from
her view. She slides a look round the room – a
glimpse is all she'll need. His shoulder. His hair.
She finds nothing. He has really gone. Little
Miss Lovely must have crept back in and stolen
him away.

She nudges through a maze of rooms,
passing clusters of guests who smile
distractedly and continue their conversations.

'Sorry.'

'Excuse me.'

She feels a sense of urgency, as if some
dangled chance is being whipped from her.

'Excuse me.'

'So sorry.'

In the Victorian conservatory she stands
defeated among a fresh thrum of guests. A man
with a foghorn voice is telling an endless joke
about a goldfish. His audience nods and fixes
him with expectant smiles, poised for the
moment when they are allowed to laugh. Hugh
could be anywhere. The most likely place is in
some silken-sheeted bedroom with Little Miss
Lovely.

The image of this churns up in her. She
wants to rage through the house, flinging open
doors and spitting fury at whoever she finds.

All around her, the thrum of guests laugh.

She wants to scream at them to shut up, and
to tell them they're all stupid. She wants to
force them to go and find him for her.

'I hope you're having a good time.' Alix
freezes. She thinks it's fascinating that this
voice, heard only once and even then so very
casually, can jolt her so powerfully now. It is as
if the idea of him has lain somewhere at the
edge of her subconscious, waiting to be called
back.