Don't You Forget About Me

скачать книгу бесплатно


“Sure?” he said.

“Positive! Though I may avoid cider and black for a little while.”

I could not believe how many people there were in the park, doing exercising stuff. Walking their dogs, having picnics with their families, power walking. “Why aren’t they all lying on their sofas watching hangover telly?” I said. “These people are sick.”

“It was your idea, Dunham. You’re the one who wanted to come out running. So when was the last time you ran?”

I had to think. “Well I ran for the bus a few weeks ago when I was going into Worcester. Although actually, that’s probably a few months back now.” I felt slightly alarmed as I thought it might have been even longer than that and I honestly couldn’t remember the last time I had left Broad Hampton. Perhaps I was going to be stuck here for ever.

“You need to stretch first,” he said. “Come on.”

I started copying what he was doing and stopped almost immediately.

“I feel like a twat – everyone is looking at me.”

“Come on, Cara,” he said sternly. “Just do it; no one’s looking at you.”

I placated him with a few half-hearted calf stretches.

“Come on then, let’s go,” he said and shot off at such a pace I considered giving up and just turning round and going the other way.

“Come on,” he shouted from ahead and I started running. He jogged back towards me and round in a circle. When I had been going for all of about forty seconds, I said I needed to stop for a rest. It was exhausting.

He continued circling around me for a while as I stood there with my hands on my thighs, head bowed like I had just finished a marathon.

“Can we walk for a bit?” I said.

“Sure,” he said. He put an arm around my shoulders and hauled me upright.

Now that I wasn’t trying to run at Usain Bolt speed, I was able to take in the sights and sounds of the park. The daffodils, the lake. “It’s nice here, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, I come most mornings.”

“Do you?” I said. “Well I did not know that.”

“There’s loads of stuff you don’t know about me.”

“Is there?” I said. “Well, it must be nice to have something to be passionate about.”

“Yeah, well I’m passionate about loads of things.”

“Like what?”

“Like you, my love,” he said in an over-the-top voice. He took my hand and spun me round and before I knew it, he had bent me over in some elaborate dance move and I was relying on him to keep me held up because my knees had somehow got lost beneath me.

“Stubbs! Get off me,” I said, giving him a whack on the arm. He pulled me up and I looked around to see if anyone had seen what a massive idiot he was being.

“What’s wrong with you,” he said, laughing hard.

“Everyone’s looking,” I said.

“Oh here we go again. Don’t want anyone looking at you, but always moaning that nobody notices you.”

“Nobody does notice me,” I said, feeling a little bit hurt and embarrassed that Stubbs seemed to think it was funny.

“Yeah, right,” he said.

“Anyway, I thought you wanted to ask April out. Isn’t she the one you’re passionate about?”

He scratched his head and looked off into the distance and kind of mumbled a bit.

“Maybe,” he said.

“Well, why don’t you then?”

“I dunno. I don’t know what she’ll say.”

“She’ll say yes. Or she’ll say no.”

“Nah, was a silly idea really. She wouldn’t go out with someone like me.”

“What do you mean, someone like you?”

“You know what April is like, she’s all bad boy bikers or corporate bankers. She goes for anyone with a bit of drama attached. I reckon I’m just too ordinary for her and just not popular enough. She is fit though.” I reckoned he added that bit about her being fit because he was worried he had almost revealed his innermost secrets and fears and had to change it at the last minute to blokeify his statement.

“Yeah, she is. Fit.” I thought, unlike me who wanted to keel over after a forty-second run. I didn’t think that being an athlete was my thing at all.

“I’m bored of this now,” I said. “Can we go for a cup of tea instead?” I motioned with my head to the tea rooms.

Stubbs reluctantly agreed and we sat near the window with a pot of tea and piles of toast.

“So the athletic life isn’t for you, then? What’s next on your plan?”

“Brain,” I offered. “Or criminal?”

“Do you want to leave without paying then?”

“No way,” I said, looking round to see if the staff or one of the customers on the nearby table had heard us.

“Brain it is then.” Stubbs reached out behind him and picked up one of the newspapers from the rack. He flicked through to the crossword page and said, “Nine down…”

“Stop,” I said. “I can’t do crosswords.” Brain was probably the least likely fit for me, I reckoned.

“How do you know you can’t? When did you last do one? Here try this one. Nine down: ‘month for fools’.”

I tutted and decided I wasn’t going to go along with it but then he said, “It’s easy.”

“April,” I said. Stubbs grinned and raised his eyebrows.

Bloody April again. Popping up everywhere to remind me how cool and popular she was. I’d always assumed things were easy for April at school. She must have had a blast, everyone liked her and she was at the centre of everything. I thought back to watching The Breakfast Club and wondered if being popular had been a curse for April, like it was for Molly Ringwald. Maybe this life as a princess wasn’t that comfortable for April after all. I wondered if she was like me and was finding it hard to shake the past or if she was satisfied to live the life she had been assigned at school. It was like April hadn’t moved on at all, trying to cling on to her popularity. It made me even more determined to move on from being the invisible girl.

Chapter Five (#ulink_cc00a960-b365-580a-b045-d3718dd75f35)

“How old are you, Liv? Nineteen? Twenty?” I’d barely given chance for her to take her coat off. I don’t suppose it was very fair of me to bombard her with questions this early on a Monday morning. I was sat at the desk, updating my CV. I was determined to have something in place before April’s reunion, to be doing something I was proud of.

“I’m twenty-five,” she said.

“Oh,” I said.

“I’ve worked with you for years,” said Liv, pleading with me to understand. I knew that she had, but sometimes I struggled to comprehend how the years had gone so fast. How had so much time passed and nothing really happened?

I wondered how things had been at school for Liv. She didn’t seem to fit into any particular type.

“Oh yeah, course,” I said to Liv, studying her for a while, wondering if she had been popular at school, wondering whether Daniel would have asked her out. She certainly fit the part: glamorous, fashionable but with her own quirky colourful style. I looked down at my own clothes: a long black tunic over a pair of trousers and another pair of block-heeled shoes. When I started working here in the summer before sixth form, it was the first time I’d been able to buy my own clothes and it felt so good to choose things for myself, but I hadn’t really changed my look since. Fashion struck me as particularly exhausting and yet here was Liv who made it look effortless. She must have been popular at school.

“So were you one of the popular girls at school?” I nodded, waiting for her to tell me like Molly Ringwald in The Breakfast Club how it was such a challenge being so popular and having to fit in with her friends.

“No. Goth.”

“Goth!? Like full goth? Black hair, eyeliner, the lot?”

“Yeah.” Liv nodded and laughed. “I had a long leather coat with Sisters of Mercy painted on the back and I wore German army boots and hardly anyone talked to me, but I didn’t talk to them either.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. How could Liv, this religious follower of YouTube beauty bloggers, ever have worn black lipstick?

“So,” I said taking a sidelong glance at Ally Sheedy, “were you, would you say, a basket case?”

Liv laughed. Being the athlete clearly wasn’t for me, and I wondered whether you were allowed to suddenly turn into a goth in your thirties.

“Probably yeah. Come here,” said Liv, “I’ll show you the pics.”

Liv scrolled through Facebook on her phone, and showed me a photo of her in full goth make-up at what looked like a family meal in something like a Toby Carvery. She was sat on the end of the table, everyone else smiling and raising their glasses in a toast, while Liv looked like the undead. I burst out laughing.

“So what happened, Liv? How did you escape from the goth cult?”

“Spots,” she said.

“Eh?”

“The main reason I started wearing loads of white make-up was because I had acne at school. It was the only thing that covered it up and stopped people noticing, and then one thing led to another and soon I was full goth with a mop of dyed black hair to hide behind every day. Once I left school, the spots cleared up and I could wear what I liked, which is good because I can’t stand the Sisters of Mercy. Give me Taylor Swift and Justin Bieber any day. But it did the job at the time. I’ve still a few scars, mind, so I still have to have big hair,” she said giving a flick of her curls, smiling and making herself smaller in her seat.

“Well, I think you look lovely, Liv. And I don’t think you are a basket case at all. And you were a very pretty goth. I wish I’d been a goth. Or something.”

Liv smiled shyly and shrunk even further down behind her computer before popping up and brightly saying, “Well this is the thing about school isn’t it? No one’s who they think they are. Hey, do you want me to goth you up?”

“Erm…” While I had thought about trying to see if some Ally Sheedy eyeliner was my thing, I wasn’t sure about going full goth.

“I can’t, Liv, I have all these jobs to apply for,” I said. Before the shop had opened, I’d already filled in two application forms and contacted a number of agencies. There was an assistant events job in a stately home nearby and an agency in Worcester had advertised a receptionist job with responsibility for events. It was in Penarth, near Cardiff, not far from where the hotel chain was. It came with live-in accommodation and the start date was soon – the week after the party.

“Come on, it will be a laugh,” said Liv, giggling.

“Go on then,” I said.

Liv rifled through her make-up bag and pulled out loads of eyeliners and some white colour correction cream and highlighter.

“I tend to go for more neutral colours now,” she said and winked. She got out of her chair and offered it to me and I sat down.

Ten minutes later, she showed me my reflection in her mirror. She’d made my face so pale by covering it in Touché Éclat and face powder, and had drawn on some ridiculous dark eyebrows and used an eyeliner to colour my lips black. Once I had gotten over the shock, I laughed so much I was shaking. There was no way I was going to be a weird goth basket case. If I turned up to the ball like this, they’d think I’d gone in fancy dress.

“Ooh, hang on a bit,” she said before grabbing some liquid eyeliner and painting on my face. “Finishing touches.” She showed me the mirror again when she’d finished.

“Liv!” She’d drawn a huge pretend Frankenstein scar on my head. I didn’t look like I was a goth and instead looked like I was going to a Halloween party. Perhaps it was time to give the whole finding my subculture a rest. I screamed laughing and so did Liv when the shop bell rang and in walked the owner, Alan.

“Having fun girls?” he said.

“We’re just…” I started. I should have kept my mouth shut because me talking had attracted attention to myself and Alan was now staring at the pretend eyeliner scar on my head.

“…doing a Halloween promotion.”

“In May? I see,” he said. “Well, you’ll need to do a lot more than that, girls. Sorry to tell you but I’ve had an offer.”

Liv looked at me with a concerned face. “What kind of offer?” she said.

“For the building. From a big supermarket. They want to open one of those little convenience branches.”

I let out a deep breath. It was no surprise the shop would close at some point. Even in Broad Hampton, things had to change. I couldn’t help feeling sad but this was another kick up the backside I needed. If they wanted the building, the flat would go too. I’d have to move on.