The ABCs of Love (2 page)

They talked together a lot of the time about intercomputer networking, HTML, broadband versus Bluetooth, although every so often, Peter, the young one, would look at me and wink. I suppose he meant to include me, but I was beginning to wonder why I was there. Then Peter went to the toilet, and after we’d sat there in silence for a bit, the other man leaned across the table and asked me how much. His breath smelled of pear drops, I remember, and all the time I was thinking,
How much what? How
much wine? How much time?

And then I realized.

I was running down the street, my face red, when Peter caught up with me. He grabbed my arm. I was shouting, “No, no,” but weakly, so he turned me toward him and we kissed then. You know how sometimes when you kiss someone, your tongues intertwine and it feels like an electric shock racing through your body? As if your kiss has connected two wires between you, but all the resulting fizzles, crackles, and sparks are going on between your legs, not in your mouth? That’s what happened then. That’s why I agreed to go back to his hotel with him.

He touched my breasts a lot.

It is something I am sensitive about. You see, my breasts are very big. People can sometimes be cruel and shout out things about them in the streets. I hated them when I was growing up. I used to wear a too-tight swim-suit under my clothes to hold them down so no one would notice them. It used to make going to the toilet exhausting because I’d have to take off everything. Plus, at school we used to have these very short stall doors in the ladies’ room, so I had to hold up all my clothes at waist height with one hand so no one could see.

Of course, I wasn’t a virgin when I made love to Peter, but it was the first time anyone had touched my breasts like that. As if they weren’t dirty, weren’t something to be ashamed about. It seemed to mean something.

We had breakfast together in the morning, and he kissed me good-bye. There in the restaurant, like we were a proper married couple or something.

When I got into work, I didn’t tell anyone. People kept saying how quiet I was. I went to the loo after a bit, and when I pulled down my knickers, I could smell Peter. That’s when I started to cry.

I haven’t heard from him since. It was my first time with a stranger like that. I hope it will be my last. I thought Colin was going to be a one-night stand for Sally at first. I get angry with Sally sometimes because she doesn’t seem to feel the same guilt I felt about Peter.

See also Colin; True Romance

C

captains

This is how Sally and I first became friends.

Like the singing, in my head I am completely coordinated as far as sports are concerned. Now that I am an adult, I don’t have to do anything I don’t want to, but I still like to lie in bed imagining how I can catch ball after ball in hands that open and caress rather than sting painfully. I picture my legs finding such a sweet rhythm as I run the 800-meter that I almost levitate off the ground, able to go on and on and on as I race past all the other runners.

In reality, I became the school expert at the rain dance I created in the hope that games would be canceled. It wasn’t just the humiliation; it was the way your legs would get so cold on the hockey field, the skin red and blue and sharp with pain.

Sally walked in on me once in the girls’ locker room just as I was jumping up and down in the deserted showers, hands on top of my head, elbows flapping. I was chanting, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, rain, rain, rain.”

She took one look and left. I thought she might have been smiling, but I’d been too embarrassed to look closely. Neither of us said anything.

An hour later, we were standing at the edge of the sports field in the perfect sunshine. Sally was at the front of the class with the gym teacher, as she was always one of the team captains. I was standing at the back of the group of girls so I wouldn’t have to keep getting out of the way when the other, more popular students were picked for the teams.

I thought it was a joke when Sally chose me before anyone else. I didn’t want to go up at first, but everyone kept prodding me. Sally always picked me first after that.

I never asked her why, even afterward when we took a vow to tell each other everything. I always hoped it was because Sally was the one person who could look into my head and see those sweet catches I made in my dreams. How perfect everything was there.

See also Blackbirds, Robins, and Nightingales; Kindness;
Vendetta; X-ray Vision

codes

Sally and I used to write letters in code but when you take it as seriously as that you have to have something to say. Nothing is worse than going to the trouble of uncovering a secret and finding nothing there. That’s when we started shoplifting. We’d write lists of what we’d taken in our code. I
think that was why we were n-ever caught. If people can’t understand you, they tend to make you invisible. They don’t bother with you.

See also Friends; Indecent Exposure; Woolworths; Yields; Zzzz

colin

I am starting to get suspicious about Colin. Maybe it’s a hangover after my escapade with Peter, but I worry about the way he seems to treat Sally so casually.

Sally says that as long as he pays the bills and keeps her happy, she doesn’t mind if he is a mad axman. She says his attitude is a relief.

“I’m blossoming,” she says, and so she is.

I try to be happy for her, but when I walk up and down the road where Sally says Colin lives with his wife and family, I see no sign of him. I can’t smell Colin in the air. Also, he is spending more and more time with Sally in what she calls their “love nest.”

“Isn’t his wife jealous?” I ask.

“If Colin doesn’t mind, who cares?” Sally says, and I must admit it seems a little bit odd that it’s me who does.

See also Best Friends; Foreheads; Love Calculators; Stalking;
Youth

crème caramel

Sally has a friend who can devour a whole crème caramel from a plate in one go. I have seen her do it. She stands over the table with her hands behind her back, and then she sucks it up all at once without leaving a drop either on the plate or around her lips.

Sally herself can fit thirty-eight Maltesers into her mouth at once. She has to stuff them under her lips and in the spaces at the back of her jaw. It is not a very attractive sight, especially when she has to spit them all out again. But then neither is the crème-caramel-sucking-up trick, but at parties, people always ask to see them. It makes Sally and her friend the center of attention and the rest of us feel jealous.

Unfortunately, I don’t like either Maltesers or crème caramel, and the one trick I do know is very complicated, involving three packs of cards. Could this be where I am going wrong?

See also Captains; Underwear; Wobbling

D

daisies A

My mother told me once that I was not sweet enough to be called after a flower. Something useful, yes, but not a flower. Her name was Rose, and I thought if I also had a pretty name, then I’d look more like her.

I called myself Daisy in secret and would talk about myself in the third person. “Daisy’s nearly ready for bed now” or “Look how pretty Daisy looks in the mirror.” It made me feel like I belonged. But then one day I blurted out something about wanting to be called Daisy, and everyone laughed.

“It sounds more like a cow,” said my father, and he smiled fondly at my mother.

See also Ants; Names; True Romance; Zest

danger

Sally will always be my only real friend, although I hope she never finds that out. She would probably think it was funny.

When we were growing up, our families were very different. Her parents used to go to the pub and drink sweet liqueurs that made her mother giggle. They were also what my parents called “Sunday drivers,” which meant they went on outings. If I was lucky, they’d take me with them sometimes. Sally’s mother called us “the girls,” which I liked because it made me seem like a second daughter. As if Sally and I were interchangeable.

Once, we all went to a fete in the country and watched a local girl being crowned the Rose Queen. She sat giggling on a throne, holding a bunch of roses and surrounded by Rose Princes. These princes were all spotty and fat. The dishy boys were too busy throwing grass over the Rose Princesses to look at the Queen. The minute they’d put the crown on her, she’d become too much for them, although we couldn’t see why she’d been picked in the first place.

Sally and I soon got bored because no one was throwing grass over us, so we went to look round. We found a bridge that was very crowded, so we joined the throng going over it. When we reached the middle, we suddenly heard the cracking and splitting of wood, and the bridge gave way.

Later, the man who owned the house and gardens came out and said that the trouble was that the bridge didn’t lead anywhere, just to a shut gate; so what had happened was that people were coming straight back at the same time as others were crossing, and that meant there was too much weight in the middle for the bridge to hold. Considering the danger we’d all come through, he was surprisingly unsympathetic. It was the last time he was holding the fete on his grounds, he said, because he didn’t understand why the public were all so keen to go over a bridge that went nowhere. And now he’d have to have the bridge mended, which was going to cost money he didn’t have.

I read about an experiment that made men go over a very dangerous bridge, and when they got to the other side, they were shown photographs of women. All the men found the women more attractive than they would have done if they had not just had such an exciting experience. However, Sally and I both agreed that when the Rose Queen came to wish us well in the Red Cross tent, she was so ugly, we still wondered why she had been crowned.

Sally has always taken me places, shown me the way to behave, what to do. Sometimes I wonder if this is why she likes me. Sometimes I wonder if where she takes me is always the best place to go.

See also Best Friends; Worst-Case Scenario

dogs

The chairman of our company has a Dalmatian dog called Jupiter. When he brings it into work, we have to take turns walking it at lunchtime. He seems to think it is a treat for us and makes jokes about how many girl-friends his dog has. It does make you wonder what he thinks we are.

Susan, the receptionist, once told me that she had taken a call from his French au pair. This girl was in tears because she had broken the vacuum cleaner when she was outside, Hoovering the lawn. Susan told her to take the vacuum cleaner inside and pretend it had never happened, but the girl kept crying, saying how much trouble she’d get into if the chairman’s wife came back and found anything left on the grass.

Perhaps the wife was getting her revenge. You are always hearing stories about au pairs getting it on with their bosses. The chairman is good-looking enough. I have often smiled at him on the stairs or when we meet in the office, but I’m not sure he even notices me. He always calls me Veronica and laughs in this coughing little way when he sees me.

I remember reading that a jilted girlfriend once got back at her boyfriend by letting herself into his flat when he was away and planting grass seed all over the carpet. She went in every morning while he was on holiday and watered it. I would have loved to have seen his face when he opened the door.

We never had a dog, although I wanted one. I used to imagine waking up nearly every morning and hearing one barking for me downstairs. Once, I picked a particularly beautiful leaf and kept it in a glass bowl as a pet until I got bored of it. I do realize how pathetic this may sound now, but at the time I really loved that leaf.

See also Ambition; Revenge; Tornadoes

doors

It is impossible to have an advertisement in Britain that features a shut door. This is because so many people were locked in their bedrooms as children that even as adults, they automatically start to panic when a door isn’t open. Even just an inch.

There were times when my mother used to tell me to stay in my bedroom. It wasn’t cruel, she just wanted a break from looking after me. I’d have as many books as I wanted, treats to eat. I’d make myself a nest up there.

I always came down when my father came home, though. I was so happy to see him, but he’d be tired after his day at work. He said he just wanted to spend some quiet time with my mother. I had so much to talk about, after my day of reading, but he didn’t seem to want to hear it.

See also Houses; Noddy; Property; Velvet; Yellow

dreams

Sally once went out with a man who liked to record her dreams in a diary. She had to break it off with him because she got too exhausted. She’d be awake all night trying to think of interesting things for him to write about.

See also Codes; Mistaken Identity; Utopia