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‘I didn’t always want to be a hairdresser.’ Miranda shook her head so her hair really did flare out, just like it did in her magazine pictures. ‘That English teacher I told you about. He’s got a lot to answer for.’
I bared my teeth, trying to smile along with her.
‘And are you really sure you’re all right?’ she said.
I nodded, blinking the tears back. This was how to be normal. To learn when to be quiet. There was no reason why I couldn’t do it. Not every story has to have an ending.
She looked at her watch and then grimaced. ‘I must be off. Mum’s got bingo tonight and I promised I’d look after Dad so she can enjoy a night off. He can’t get around by himself, you know, not since his accident. Mind you, you’d be surprised at the trouble he can get up to in his wheelchair. Speedy, that’s what Mum says we should call him.’ She grimaced and then shook herself. ‘You take care now, honey-girl. Time for me to love you and leave you. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,’ she said brightly, her hair slicing the air around her as she walked away.
‘Oh you,’ I cooed as I stood looking at myself in my mirror. I lifted my skirt above my knees, looking at my legs harshly. I couldn’t even pretend they were romantic tonight. They looked fat. Filled up with lies and unsaid things. Mr Roberts was right. The whole of me was nothing more than lumpy, mashed potatoes.
I shook myself all over in the mirror. My head, my arms, my bottom, my legs. I watched the fat wobble, wanting to prove to myself I wasn’t as flabbily solid as Miranda. That my outline could be redrawn, even my bones broken.
And that was something I had to believe. That little chance of transformation. Otherwise what was the point of anything?
Chapter Eight (#ulink_09e8054c-07db-5933-b923-9c5782ba0a60)
‘I used to be a little scrap of a thing, so small no one really paid any attention to me.’ I ignored Mr Roberts’s snort from the bottom of the ladder as I noticed my voice turn to almost a whisper. ‘Then all of a sudden one morning I woke up and it was as if I’d turned into someone else. With a cartoon sexy body I couldn’t control. I can’t have developed that quickly, of course, but it was what it felt like. None of my clothes fitted and at first Dad refused to waste money on new ones. I got to hate the way he’d glare at me every morning and tell me to pull my skirt down, or button up my shirt properly as if it were my fault I was popping out of everything. He was always on at me.
‘I’d walk around with my arms crossed, my shoulders hunched, but you can’t be on guard all the time. Round about that time, all the boys at school started to notice me too,’ I spoke down to Mr Roberts. ‘Even the little boys had crushes on me. Once when they had an exam, they begged me to give them a good luck kiss, queuing up so I wouldn’t miss one out. They’d bring me presents, things they’d stolen from their mothers just so I’d remember them the next time I walked past.’
‘What’s that?’ Mr Roberts grumbled. ‘Speak up, Molly. You’re mumbling.’
‘But it was the boys my age who were the worst.’ There was no one else in the shop but my heart was knocking against my chest so hard I could almost feel it vibrate against the shelf. ‘My pigeon hole would be filled with notes. I’d find telephone numbers scribbled on my class books. They came round to my house in gangs and just stood outside the door. Once a boy knocked himself out on a lamppost because he was clowning around to get my attention. He had a black eye the next day at school.’
‘Teenage boys,’ Mr Roberts sighed. ‘Too many hormones. They never learn.’
‘But I wouldn’t go near any of them,’ I said. ‘I think that’s probably why they all kept after me. It wasn’t that I didn’t want a boyfriend. My father would never have let me. He thought it was all my fault.’
‘Only natural to want to protect you,’ Mr Roberts said.
‘After that, nothing I did was right. I couldn’t stop making him angry,’ I said. ‘I’d come out after school, and there he’d be, waiting for me. He’d glower at every boy who passed us when we walked home. He said he couldn’t trust me. As if it were my fault.
‘I learnt never to talk to boys anywhere, inside or outside school. And then not to girls either. He’d always find out somehow and there would be an inquisition. He made me wear all these really frumpy clothes. Once when we were at the shops, he had to leave me alone for a minute and a boy I’d never seen before came up and asked if I knew where the chemist was. That was all, but my father caught us and the fireworks went on for days.’
‘Sounds a bit harsh,’ Mr Roberts admitted. ‘Although you do have to look after daughters.’ He seemed unsure though and there was a silence before he spoke again. This time he was more enthusiastic. ‘But did you meet the boy again?’ he asked. ‘The one in the shopping centre? Did you get up to some rumpus-pumpus? I bet you did, Molly. I know your sort. You like your hanky-panky. Nothing wrong with that.’
I squeezed my eyes shut and pictured the rage on my father’s face as he came out of the gents to see me pointing to the bottom tier of the shopping centre and the boy nodding away. I’d just taken his rage for granted then, something I’d learnt to live with, but now I tried to see it through his eyes. What did he think could happen to make him so angry?
‘We did,’ I said. ‘But not after. That same day. I got my father to leave me for five minutes by pretending I was buying him something special as an apology, and then I ran downstairs and met the boy. We went down one of those side corridors no one uses.’
‘Just like that? In the shopping centre?’ Mr Roberts whistled through his teeth. ‘Weren’t you worried someone would see you?’
‘We were like animals,’ I said.
‘You dirty girl. It’s unbelievable.’ Mr Roberts held the ladder steady for me to come down.
‘It’s all true.’ After all, my father had thought it was the truth. He probably pictured the whole scene in much more detail than I’d just told it.
‘And not very nice,’ Mr Roberts said, with more than a hint of pleasure.
He was right. It wasn’t nice, but that night, for the first time since I could remember, I slept like a baby. I woke up early to the electric whinny of the milk van as it made deliveries along the High Street, and drifted back to the kind of safe half-sleep world where everything is sweet, anything is possible. I knew I had found my stories.
Maybe because I had already confessed to Miranda, it was easier to tell Mr Roberts I’d got a boyfriend.
I was halfway up the ladder, moving boxes of staplers and ballpoint pens from one side of the shelf to the other. Mr Roberts’s hands were on my calves to keep me steady.
‘I’ve got a boyfriend, you know,’ I said. ‘A proper one.’ I paused a moment, waiting for his reaction.
‘Well, good for you, girl. I knew you would get cleaned up, although—’ He shook his head, his middle fingertip pressing against my flesh a little too hard.
‘I’ll still tell you stuff,’ I said quickly. ‘Maybe I can even tell you about Tim. It’s OK. He won’t mind.’ He won’t know, I whispered to myself.
‘I’m not sure it will be the same,’ Mr Roberts said. ‘It seems impure somehow. Young love and all that.’
I held my breath because I knew I couldn’t afford to lose my home and salary. Mr Roberts was quite capable of docking my wages if I didn’t come up with the goods. I’d seen him with salesmen. They thought he was going to be an easy catch because of his woolly jumpers and funny thick glasses, but more often than not, they’d stand outside the shop afterwards, going over figures on their calculators as if they couldn’t believe what had just happened to them.
If Mr Roberts spoke before I counted to ten then everything would be OK.
He came in exactly as I reached eight. ‘We’ll maybe see how it goes. Give it a few weeks.’
I shoved the box I’d been pretending to move right over to the end of the shelf. ‘That’s it finished up here,’ I said cheerfully, but Mr Roberts kept his hand on my leg longer than he normally did. And he stayed where he was as I climbed down so I had to hold my body against his until I got to the bottom and could step aside. This was a new development, one I wasn’t too sure about.
Chapter Nine (#ulink_b7744276-85f5-5de6-89d4-50feadc03b6e)
I watched Tim’s hand brush along the back of the Seize the Day bench as if he was testing the grain of the wood. Then he made a sudden lunge, missing first and knocking my arm before finally taking my hand in his.
I squeezed back but then he started to hurt me so I tried to loosen his grasp. He shook his head and kept on pinching at my fingers. We carried on grasping each other in silence although I could see my skin turning white.
‘I’ve been plucking up the courage to ask you something,’ he said eventually.
‘Go on,’ I encouraged. I felt so light when I was with him. So free of any need to be looking over my shoulder.
‘I was wondering if I might kiss you tomorrow,’ he said.
I burst out laughing. I couldn’t help it. ‘You can kiss me now.’ I pouted my lips out to him.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I would prefer it to be tomorrow.’
Knowing I was going to be kissed made me jumpy and restless the next day. I couldn’t eat anything, not even my usual breakfast of a fruit scone. It was still sitting in its brown paper bag under the till at lunchtime.
In the end, I went over to persuade Miranda to take an extra cigarette break because Mr Roberts wasn’t helping my mood. He had already made me do all sorts of unnecessary chores around the shop that morning, shifting the display of envelopes from one side of the room to the other, telling me to go up and interrupt customers who were happily browsing and ask if they wanted something, making me sort out the coloured pencils into separate jars. He was watching me for signs of love, he said. We couldn’t afford to let things get slipshod just because cupid had shot his arrow.
At last a big order from the Insurance Office on Silver Street came in, and as he never trusted me with anything important, he bustled round ticking things off the list. This gave me a small respite.
Miranda and I huddled in the doorway of the fashion boutique next to her salon. Despite the fact that the two women who ran it were arrow-thin, continually pointing themselves in successful directions, they never opened their shop before eleven in the morning, so it was a useful place for us to meet.
‘There’s this little girl been born somewhere who’s got a bottom half like a tail,’ Miranda told me. ‘Both legs are joined together and they’re going to have to do an operation to separate them. There was an interview with the doctor in my magazine. They called him Dr Mermaid, because that’s what the girl looks like. Apparently the operation rarely works but he never gives up hope.’
‘How do you practise kissing?’ I interrupted her.
‘You must have kissed someone,’ she said, surprised.
‘Of course I have, stupid,’ I lied. ‘But I want this to be perfect. I’m sure there used to be a way the girls at school rehearsed.’
‘With a banana,’ Miranda said firmly. ‘You snog a banana.’
It was only after I’d nipped across to the supermarket and got myself a whole bunch of bananas that weren’t even on special offer that Miranda came into the shop and said she’d just remembered she’d got it wrong. Bananas weren’t for practising kissing. They were for something altogether different. And had I heard about this woman who went into a supermarket in Manchester and had been bitten by a tarantula who came over on a bunch of bananas?
That night, on the Seize the Day bench, Tim made to take my hand before he stopped and asked me to shut my eyes. I did and then held my hand out, open fingered, to him. My arm was shaking, but instead of holding on to me, pulling me closer as I hoped, I felt him slipping something egg shaped into my palm.
I opened my eyes and peered down. A walnut was cupped there, looking withered and brain-like.
‘What’s this?’ I asked.
‘Shhhh.’ Tim looked round. ‘You have to learn to speak quieter, Molly. Trees have ears.’
‘Sorry,’ I whispered. ‘But why’ve you given me a nut?’
‘It contains a secret. A word only you will know.’
I stared at him. He looked completely serious. His brows were too heavy for the thinness of his face. They overshadowed every other feature and made him look dangerous in the wrong lights.
‘How will I know I’ve got the right word?’ I asked.
‘Hold it. Think.’
So I did. I shut my eyes again and the word came. It came miraculously. I knew it was right without questioning. I just didn’t know what it meant in this context.
‘Fridge,’ I said, and when I opened my eyes, Tim was smiling, not at me but I knew it was because of me. I was so proud it felt like a ball of sunshine had burst in my stomach.
‘And now I’ll kiss you,’ he said.
There are kisses and kisses. Prostitutes never kiss. Most teenagers dream of doing nothing else. The sound of a mother’s kiss was taken up in a spaceship to soothe aliens on distant planets. Eskimos kiss by rubbing noses. To kiss Marilyn Monroe was apparently like kissing Hitler so bristly was her upper lip. To kiss at the point of ejaculation guarantees a child genius. So complicated is social kissing that it’s safer for normal people like Miranda and myself just to stand there, waiting for one, or two, or even three cheeks to be airbrushed towards us. French kisses. Butterfly kisses. Kissing cousins. Kiss of life. Kiss of death.
Tim’s kiss was a lick of melon.
Honey sweet melon fresh in your mouth at breakfast time when you’re on holiday and life is good. In fact it’s never been better.
I put my hand up to my mouth when he finally drew away. I rubbed the tips of my fingers over my lips. It was a good job I was sitting down because my legs were shaky. It was as if Tim had sucked all the air from my body.
So this was what it was all about.
‘Do you think we could do that again?’ I asked.
He took the walnut from me. I hadn’t realised I’d been holding it so tightly until I felt him prise my fingers open one by one to release it.
‘No.’ He shook his head. He’d stopped smiling now. ‘But tomorrow we can.’
I must have sighed then, because Tim took my hand and rubbed the dent that was still on my palm from where I’d been clutching the walnut.
‘If we’re spared,’ he added.
Chapter Ten (#ulink_d0e7cc35-7721-5a5d-b6e5-af6b3f55338e)
The day after the Kiss was late night shopping for the posh end of town.
Down on our side of the street though, we closed at five sharp every night. Sometimes Mr Roberts and I would get customers who’d come and press their noses at the door and rattle the handle, confused as to why they could buy designer shoes or fancy jewellery at eight o’clock at night, but not a box file or a pencil.
‘Because we’ve got bloody homes to go to, mate,’ Mr Roberts would mouth at them, and I’d nod along with the righteous warmth of being on the inside although, of course, I didn’t exactly have a home to rush back to.
I went to the bench instead, and Tim was waiting for me, hunched up inside his jumper. He pulled the sleeves down to cover his hands. A red scarf was wrapped tightly round his neck.
‘It’s a bit chilly,’ he said, and then he stood up, took my hand and told me to trust him. I could almost feel the energy coming off him as he pulled me down half-lit alleys I’d never noticed before, through car parks and shop yards. Waiters looked up at us as they sat on the back steps of their restaurants, sipping coffee and having cigarettes before the evening rush began. An older man and young woman embraced just behind a half-open office door, his briefcase slotted between their legs.
Tim didn’t say a word even as we passed through the automatic doors of the shopping centre. He’d been hushing me all the way along as I tried to make conversation. We stood there for a moment, breathing in the smell of freshly baked bread from the café at the entrance.
‘It’s not real, that smell,’ I rambled. ‘It’s a spray they use, or they put it in the air conditioning. It was in one of Miranda’s magazines. A woman once seriously hurt herself by. . . ’ I had to put my hand over my mouth to shut myself up.
Tim pulled me along again. In the town’s one department store, he led the way up to home furnishings, going not by the lift or even the escalator, but through an unmarked door and up by the staff steps.
‘Are we allowed?’ I asked, but he didn’t hesitate once, not even when we passed a uniformed security guard coming down carrying three heavy boxes. Then through another door and we were back in the main part of the shop. We were standing in front of a display case full of glass ornaments when he turned to me.
‘Have you seen anything more beautiful?’ he said.
He pointed at a statue of a polar bear, about six inches high, framed in a square box. The bear was made of clear white glass apart from its four cloudy legs and it had an etched expression of tranquillity on its face. The base was spiked up to look like falling snow. The rim of the box was edged with gold. Inside, the bear had a curious wild dignity amongst the sparkly bejewelled cats and dogs it kept company with on the shelves.
We stood on either side of it. When I bent down to the bear’s level, I looked right through it and saw Tim staring just as intensely from the other side. But then he caught me looking at him and started to laugh. His smile was warm and real through the icy perfection of the glass. I felt something melt inside me as I laughed back.
‘It’s trapped,’ he said. ‘I come and look at it sometimes to work out how I can help it break free.’
‘Can’t you just buy it?’ I asked. ‘Or steal it.’
Tim shook his head. ‘That would just be forcing it into another kind of captivity,’ he said. ‘It would be under an obligation then.’
‘It’s very beautiful,’ I said, because it was. I didn’t tell Tim I disagreed with him. There was a feeling of calmness about the bear that made me think it was exactly where it wanted to be.
‘Come on, Molly,’ he said. ‘Let’s get ourselves home.’
‘Home?’ I asked.
He looked surprised. ‘To the bench,’ he said. ‘Where else?’
‘I didn’t really mix with the girls at school,’ I told Mr Roberts from the top of my ladder, ‘but there was one girl, Leanne, who I liked. She spent a lot of time on her own too.’
The ladder shuddered as Mr Roberts coughed. ‘Sorry, Molly,’ he said. ‘Just not been feeling too good recently. Mrs Roberts keeps on at me to go to the doctor’s.’ He coughed again.
I shut my eyes until he’d finished. ‘You were never really allowed to stay in the school buildings at break-time,’ I said. ‘They had this idea that fresh air was good for you, but what it meant was that everyone congregated in bits of the playground where you couldn’t be seen and there they’d smoke or get up to other trouble. Sometimes they’d even creep through the trees and go into town. The older ones went to the pub.’
