Undertow (7 page)

I used to laugh at that stuff in magazines. Love at first sight. That your heart could stop. But I swear in that second everything stood still. The earth ceased turning and there was this sucking silence, draining everything around it, drawing the breath out of me. Then suddenly the world switched on again. The Kaiser Chiefs sang “Ruby”, and I could hear the chink of china on china, smell bacon fat and coffee, feel my hand on cold glass. And him.

He was older. Eighteen, I guessed. Tall, taller than me. And this grace about him. But strength too, and confidence, without being arrogant. Like he knew who he was. Like he didn’t care what anyone thought.

Maybe it wasn’t fate. Maybe I’d willed this. Wanted this to happen. And he was just there at the right time. A coincidence. I’d waited at school. For a knight in shining armour who would ride in and rock my world, take me out of it. But all I got were kids like Ash and Leon, joking and smoking and giving it the big
I am
.

Yet now, here was a knight. And he didn’t ride in. And he had long hair and a faded tour T-shirt instead of armour. But whatever, it happened.

“All right?” he says. “What can I get you?”

His voice is soft. The accent is there, but it’s different on him. Makes him sound outdoorsy, a surfer.

I mumble back, still looking at the counter, unable to meet his eyes. I know I won’t be able to eat shortbread. That it will stick in my throat, dry now from fear, or anticipation.

“Apple juice,” I say. My voice is cracked. I cough and repeat it. Adding a “sorry”. “And a pen,” I say, remembering.

I reach into my pocket for change and dump a handful of coins on the counter before he can reach his hand out. Don’t want to touch him, in case he can tell. A fifty pence piece rolls onto the floor and I feel my face redden.

“Sorry,” I say again.

He laughs. “It’s OK. Really.”

I turn to glance at the girl. She’s watching me, mouth open slightly, a smile on the edge of her lips, but not a friendly one. A crocodile smile. The kind that comes with a catch.

When I look back he’s smiling, too. But this one is hiding nothing. This one is true. And it’s meant for me.

“Here,” he says.

In his hand is a juice box and a blue Bic biro. I hesitate, hoping he’ll put them down, but instead he reaches further towards me. I hold my hand out and close it around the pen and carton. Our fingers touch for a second, and I feel it, a burning heat, like he’s some storybook superhero. Except he’s not; he’s real. And in that instant I know, and when I meet his eyes, I see something there. A look that says he knows too.

I sit at the corner table. Away from the girl, my back to the counter. It takes me all of thirty seconds to drink the juice and scribble on the postcard. My new address. And our old one. The top-floor flat off the high street, with the broken-down boiler and the Blu-Tack stains and the F-I-N-N carved into the kitchen table when Mum wasn’t looking. When I left the Internet café I thought I’d be funny, write, “Wish I was there.” But in a few minutes everything has changed. I’ve changed. And instead I write, “Wish you were here.”

Because I don’t want to go back. Not even if I don’t find my dad. Because I’ve found someone else. And I don’t know his name. But I’m sure of it. That it’s him, and always has been.

HET

THE FIRST
time Het sees him is at the fair
.

It is Easter and she is home from Cambridge to spend two clock-watching, tick-tocking weeks avoiding her father and ignoring her mother, bolting down her dinner so she can spend more time lying on her bed, refusing the pleas to get some fresh air, some exercise
.

But the house is stifling. Her father boiling over some imagined slight on her mother’s part. Will playing American rock so loud the bass notes reverberate through her. Het needs air. So she tells her mother she is going to the fair. Eleanor purses her lips, says isn’t she too old? And besides, Jonty is coming for supper – doesn’t she want to see him?

But Het doesn’t. She wants candyfloss and coconuts and goldfish in bags. She wants to fly. So at six o’clock she pulls her tangle of hair back into a ponytail and picks her old Crombie coat off the peg in the hall
.

“Good God, you’re not going out like that?” Her father stares in disbelief at this child in old man’s clothing
.

But she is going out like that. She bursts out of the door and runs down the hill, breathing in great gulps of briny air, feeling the sting of it on her face, its stickiness in her hair. Not caring that she will pay for this later. When she has to wash the sea from the heavy tweed before rot sets in. And endure the questions from her mother, and silence from him
.

That night she rides rockets and eats a toffee apple, biting through the cracking cherry-red to the soft woody flesh beneath. Then, when she is done, she throws the stick carelessly onto a pile of polystyrene burger boxes, and climbs up onto the waltzers. Ignoring her mother in her head, telling her she’ll be sick, that she always is
.

That’s when she sees him. Leaning over her as he clunks the safety barrier into place. Het looks up at the face just inches from hers and sees something, some trace element, a mineral she knows she needs, that she has been waiting for. She opens her mouth to speak, but instead he kisses her. Right then, before he’s even said a word to her, before he even knows her name, he leans in and pushes his mouth onto her toffee-apple lips. He tastes of cigarettes and peppermint and life
.

“What are you doing?” she says when he pulls away
.

“Something,” he laughs. “Everything.”

And instead of heavy shame, she feels weightless. And she knows in that instant it is him
.

BILLIE

BUT, JUST
like that, like a superhero, like a knight, he’s gone. I sit in the café for two mornings straight, clasping a cracked mug of cold tea; scum clinging to its surface, I’ve made it last so long. Behind the counter is a woman, older, hair scraped back in a thin ponytail, gold earrings and necklaces like she’s 50 Cent. The music’s changed too. Mariah Carey and Beyoncé. Like it’s a different place. I wonder if I made him up.

I figure I should forget it. Can’t keep waiting. Like a stalker, a sad case.

Besides, I have to visit my new school, meet the headteacher. Finn has seen his already, St Mary’s Primary, full of toilet-roll puppets, and murals of tigers, and guinea pigs in a cage. He wants to start now so he can paint wild animals, hold the guinea pigs, but the headmistress says he’s to wait until after Easter; it’ll be easier then. She’s set him a project, something to do with the Tudors. Mum is delighted, says his old school would never have done that. Says it shows how right she was, how right we were, to move away.

Mum wants to come with me too, to see the new-computers-and-no-graffiti of her imagination. More evidence for her. But I fob her off, say I’d rather go alone, tell her it’s about independence. And anyway, Finn needs her to do stuff on Henry VIII.

She’d be disappointed anyway. Seaton High isn’t bright and shiny and new. It’s old, and dirty. A great draughty Victorian thing, the walls glossed in wipe-clean Starburst orange and green. Like Peckham Park was before they knocked it down and built the Academy, as if shiny chrome and glass and new carpet would change everything. Still the same teachers, the same kids from the same estates. Same dealers at the gates. And within a month the chrome and glass is sticky with hand prints and the carpet stained with Coke and spit and blood.

I’m not fooling myself like Mum. School is school, and it’ll be the same here as it was there, as it is everywhere. Only this one is here. In his town. Near him.

I sit in the corridor outside the headmaster’s office, on a plastic chair with gum stuck to the underside and
Dane
carved into the back. Kids stream past talking about last night’s TV and tomorrow’s footie; voices hushing when they see me, then whispering behind folders covered in stickers and cartoons and
Lianne
❤
Justin
. Then the bell rings, and they disappear, like a shoal of fish, scattering through open doorways, flickers of uniform blue. Then I’m alone in the Dulux orange glow again.

I’m still waiting when I hear someone slump into the chair next to mine; smell too much perfume and cigarettes, and mint to cover them, failing to hide a dirty habit. I turn to say something, hello, I guess, but I see who it is, see the tight curls, and that smile, that sneer.

“I know you,” she says.

I don’t reply. Not sure what I’m supposed to say.

“You were in the café. Where you from? Truro?”

I shake my head. “London.”

“My cousin lives in London. Shona. In Wood Green.”

She looks at me, waiting. In case I know her.

I shrug. “It’s kind of a big place.”

“Like, duh.” She takes the gum out of her mouth and sticks it under her chair.

I smile and she shoots me a look.

“How come you moved here then? It’s a hole. Should have stayed in London.”

“It’s … complicated,” I say finally. “My mum grew up here. We inherited a house.” For a second I think about mentioning my dad. But what would I say? That I’m looking for a man called Tom who could be anything from thirty to ninety for all I know, and who might, just might, have come from round here. It’d make me sound desperate. Crazy, even. So instead I just add, “Whatever.” Like it balances it out. The thought. The childish thought.

“So, you know anyone?” She twists a curl slowly round a bitten-nail, chipped-varnish finger, lets it spring back.

“No.”

She thinks about this. And for a minute I think she’s looking at me like Cass used to look at half the girls at the Academy. Like I’m sad, Billy-No-Mates. And that she’ll dismiss me like Cass did them, flick fag ash on me. But instead she says, “Wanna meet us down the Clipper later?”

I start, then hide it. Affect disinterest. Playing the game. “Who’s us?”

“Me. Jake – that’s my brother. His flatmate.”

I shrug. “Maybe. I don’t know.” Don’t know what Mum will say. Where I’ll get the money.

“Well, whatever,” she echoes. “We’ll be there at eight.”

I nod.

“Billie Paradise?”

We both look up. A woman, the secretary, is standing in the doorway, waiting for me.

“Yeah,” I say, standing. I turn to the girl. “See you.”

“Wouldn’t want to be you,” she says.

Something Cass would say, and I smile, say, “You wouldn’t.”

“Not with a name like that.”

I pull up my bag and walk towards the office.

“Eva,” she calls after me.

I turn back.

“That’s my name. Not that you even bothered to ask.”

“Eva,” I repeat.

She nods, and then unwraps another stick of Doublemint, drops the paper in her bag and goes back to radiating boredom.

The headmaster is Mr Gold. Fifty-something and still thinking he’s seizing the day and changing the world.

“These are good results, Billie.” He leafs through the forms in front of him, exam results and reports sent on from the Academy. “So, what is it you want to do?”

I’m not sure what he means. “A levels?” I try.

He laughs. “I know that. I’ve got it here. Art, English and History. That’s all fine. What I mean is: what do you want to do with your life?”

I look blankly back at him. He tries again.

“Who do you want to be, Billie?”

I look to the ceiling for inspiration, find nothing but a metre-long crack, and end up saying what I always say. “I like drawing. And I’m good… At least my old teacher thought I was.”

He nods. “So, a budding Damien Hirst, then?”

The stock answer. Never mind that he’s a charlatan, or so Martha says. Because he got everyone else to paint his dots for him.

But I say, “Yeah.” Because it’s easier that way.

When I get out Eva has gone. Done a bunk. Like Cass would have. And I smile. Because school is school. Whether it’s chrome and glass or peeling orange. Even the kids are the same.

HET

HET WROTE
home from Cambridge every fortnight in her first term, just as Eleanor had asked. Long letters about the punts and the pale honey-stone and how odd the traditions seemed, gowns at dinner, tea with the bursar. She described her room in painstaking detail, the latticed glass and wood-panelled walls. Wrote stories of the other girls on her floor, how they had joined the Film Society and the Lacrosse Club, and that Anna in 3B was already in Footlights
.

What she didn’t tell them was that she never went with them. That she didn’t want to see films or play lacrosse or meet boys in dusty rehearsal rooms. That she loathed the girls and boys in equal measure. The girls were too earnest and determined. And the boys reminded her of Will and Jonty, full of themselves, and fat bottles of Chardonnay, and the knowledge that they would inherit the earth
.

She didn’t tell them that every time she picked up a book the letters blurred in front of her and her mind shut like the snap of a vanity case
.

That it all seemed so pointless
.

That instead, she wandered the Backs. Sat by the Cam, or in Belinda’s, with a cold cup of tea and a paperback. That’s where she met Martha: wiping down tables and pouring coffee with her first in Classics. Saving up to move to London, to find fame and fortune, or at least a job somewhere better than this
.

And Martha took pity on her, this Cornish girl with the wild hair, and pale eyes, and the copy of
Middlemarch
that she never seemed to finish
.

So it was Martha who she told about Tom. Martha who knew about the pregnancy. And it would be Martha who she ran to that night she left for good
.

“Will you ever go back?” Martha asks one night, weeks later
.

Het shakes her head quickly. “No.” But then she catches a memory, a fleeting thing, like a butterfly in a net. A memory of the sea, and the sand, and the sun. And of him. “Maybe,” she adds. “When they’re gone.”