Growing Up Twice (16 page)

‘I’m going to stay with my mum for a couple of nights,’ I lie. ‘I just felt like getting out of London and being made a fuss of,’ I say honestly.

‘Yes, good, she needs to get out of town,’ Selin says. ‘Get that cunt Owen out of her head.’

‘Selin!’ Rosie exclaims and presses her hands over her ears and then her belly and then her ears again in quick succession. ‘You can’t say that!’

‘What, “Owen”?’ Selin asks, winking at me. Selin is so rarely foul-mouthed that whenever she is it just makes me giggle.

‘No! You can’t say the “c” word. It’s detrimental to women,’ Rosie says indignantly. Josh is also open-mouthed and Danny looks a bit embarrassed. This is just what I need, some obscenity reclamation to turn the evening round. Maybe Selin does understand how I’m feeling after all.

‘I think girls
should
say it.’ Selin climbs on to this evening’s soapbox. ‘It desensitises it. I mean, we all say “fuck” all the time and who cares about that?’

‘It’s not the same,’ Rosie protests and I wink at Selin.

‘OK, Rosie, calm down. I’ve got a joke,’ I say, suppressing a giggle. Rosie smiles at me and abandons her new mum-to-be priggishness.

‘Why does Rupert the Bear wear chequered trousers?’

Selin, who has heard this joke before, nearly chokes on a chip.

‘I don’t know,’ Rosie sings in a nursery voice. ‘Why does he?’

‘Because he’s a cunt!’ I holler with fish-wife hilarity and the tension and stress of my day dissolve in a helpless fit of the giggles. Selin and I catch each other’s eye and neither of us can stop laughing. Eventually even Rosie joins in. Danny and Josh exchange a look.

‘I still say you can’t say that about Rupert the Bear. Not Rupert!’ Rosie says, wiping the tears from her eyes.

Selin, who seems particularly sparkly-eyed ever since she took a fifteen-minute call on her mobile in the kitchen, lies flat on the floor with her arms folded on her belly.

‘Let’s say some more swear words,’ she says. ‘It’s like being back at school.’

But we can’t think of any other rude word that makes us laugh so much.

Not even cunnilingus.

I’m the kind of person who loves train stations, trains and train journeys much more than I have ever actually enjoyed arriving anywhere.

I especially like Waterloo station, with its bright vaults of light and high-topped creations of space. I like the smell of coffee and burgers, the rushing shoals of single-minded people moving as one, pushing past and around each other, and I like the odd collections of shops selling knickers and ties, the very things you need when you are about to travel. I feel almost like a ghost in stations like this, as I always arrive at least thirty minutes early and I am never in a rush. I float dreamlike and invisible through the crowds, free from stress or worry, watching those who can’t even see me.

I feel blissfully at peace today on the very Saturday morning that I’m about to leave the comfortable confines of the centre of the city and go to see Michael in the country, well, Twickenham, which counts as the country in my book.

This morning should be filled with the kind of nagging foreboding that normally insinuates itself into the back of my mind whenever I think about what Michael and I are up to, but even that has subsided and instead I am filled with a sense of peaceful contentment that has got everything to do with this train station, I’m sure.

I wonder if there are other people like me out there who feel calmed by public transport terminals? Maybe I could start a therapy group, and lead hoards of fretful women trapped in inappropriate affairs, downtrodden by work and harried by failure into the roomy peaceful caverns of London’s mainline stations. It works better for me than a jacuzzi, isolation tank or half-bottle of vodka ever has – maybe it’s the promise of a new beginning. Even if that beginning does happen to be the beginning of a short trip to see my teenage soon-to-be lover.

Damn it, the nagging foreboding is back. It always comes back when I think of the ‘teenager’ bit.

At last the train I’m waiting for is ready for boarding and I walk down past the first-class compartments and find an empty carriage. It is a sunny September day and I pick a window spot where the velveteen seat is upholstered in warmth. I look out of the window and check the departure screen just to make sure I’m on the right train, something I have always done since I ended up on a non-stop train to Birmingham on my way to see my mum in Watford.

I should be in Twickenham in about thirty minutes. Michael will be waiting for me at the station, and although I have never been to Twickenham before I imagine a rural train station with late-flowering hanging baskets swinging from ornate Victorian wrought ironwork. I imagine a platform empty apart from his tall lean frame lounging gracefully against a red-brick wall, his tangerine hair washed out by the sunlight. Somehow, in my daydream, when I step from the train I am wearing a pair of red shoes and a matching hat. As the train pulls away it leaves a gentle mist of steam that keeps us apart for a few moments longer before we are in each other’s arms, kissing without tongues and with a lot of cheek rubbing, in that old black-and-white film way. Well, this is the kind of thing that happens when you let your imagination run away with you.

The dirty junkyard no man’s land that always seems to exist alongside city train lines slips by and my thoughts turn to the real issue at hand. This weekend – what with us having a lot of time to ourselves, just us two together for longer than a few hours for the first time ever (but never mind, that’s another thing to worry about later) – we will probably have sex.

The thing is, the last time I saw him in the flesh, so to speak, I really wanted to do it, really I did. He had been so sweet in the pub, so romantic, and so sexy in the taxi. I’d had some gin and about half a pint of that wine and I was all fired up for base four. I haven’t had sex since that dreadful encounter with Danny, which was a disappointing episode. The kind of sex that makes you think a full-length mirror and a box of Kleenex would have served your partner just as well, and that makes you a bit pissed off that you even bothered in the first place. Michael had been so impressed with me that I wanted to eat up his admiration. It’s been a long time since I’ve felt that confident in myself. But, to be really honest, the moment I closed the door on him and walked out of the little bubble we had created for ourselves I felt relieved that nothing too concrete had actually happened, that I hadn’t crossed any kind of boundary.

You know what? I can’t imagine any thirty-year-old man racking his conscience over whether or not to have sex with a willing eighteen-year-old girl. I think I think too much.

Twickenham is the next stop and if I want to have sex with him I damn well will. Probably. Always supposing he doesn’t blow it before we get to the crunch, that is.

Twickenham station is nothing like I imagined, it’s more of a concrete post-war concoction with some half-dead flowers in what used to be a rubbish bin, before rubbish bins were banned.

Michael is not on the platform and there seems to be more than one way out. I follow the signs and the people until I find myself outside by a taxi rank. I button my cherry-red leather denim-style jacket up to protect my probably too-bare cleavage from a sudden breeze that goes right through my jeans. I stand on one high-heeled booted foot and then the other. There is no sign of Michael.

This is very annoying. I had especially planned my journey so that my train would arrive fifteen minutes after we had arranged to meet, but I can’t see his red hair anywhere in the crowd and now
he
is twenty minutes late. I think lateness is so rude.

I could phone him but I don’t want to seem too keen. I’ll wait for another ten minutes and then get the next train back to Waterloo; I’ll take it as a sign that this was never meant to be and prepare myself for the comforting welcome of my favourite terminal and McDonald’s. The prospect suddenly seems rather inviting.

Except that here he is now, running right at me, the pockets of his combats flapping in the wind. Does he have any other type of trouser option apart from combats, I wonder? Does he have more than one pair, for that matter?

‘Hi!’ he says, halting millimetres from my face, eyes wide with smiles. ‘God, sorry I’m so late, I had to wait ages for a bus and the battery on my mobile is dead so I couldn’t even call you. God, I’m sorry.’ He grabs my forearm a little awkwardly and kisses my cheek with cold lips. Wanting to reassure him, I pat the small of his back and look up into his brown eyes.

‘I’ve only been waiting a few minutes. My train was late.’ It seems as though all the intimacies we established last time we saw each other need to be recreated. We touch each other clumsily, and as he leads me away he takes my hand the wrong way and we laugh, break hands and re-engage in a self-conscious way. It’s been a long time since anyone wanted to hold my hand in public.

‘The bus-stop is over here,’ he says, and I follow him, silently considering and deciding not to offer to pay for a cab. As we reach the stand he sits down on one of the narrow benches and gestures for me to sit on his knee. I think of the weight of my behind and the slenderness of his thighs and I can’t think of anything worse, so I decline. From a barely discernible gathering of his eyebrows I think he is slightly hurt, but not half as much as he would be if I sat on his unsupported knee.

‘So, what fun have you got planned for me this weekend?’ I say, waggling my eyebrows in a suggestive way, against my better judgement. His eyebrows smooth out and he laughs at me, shaking his head.

‘I thought we could go to my local tonight and play some pool, my mates will be down there. Sarah might be there too, but she’ll be cool. At least she should be by now, it
has
been nearly a month.’

I nod in agreement and think ‘poor old Sarah’, and then I think there is nothing I want less than to be in the pub with his beer-mat-flipping fraternity putting pound coins in the jukebox to listen to tuneless nonsense I’ve never heard of and then pooling the last of their change on the table to see if they’ve got enough for another round. Been there, done that. So vehement is my reaction that I almost turn around and head back to the station, but just at that moment Michael’s long fingers reach out to hook around mine and he tugs me close to him and stands up to put his arms around my waist.

‘I’m so glad you’re here,’ he says, kissing me softly and drawing me into the fold of his body, blotting out the cold.

I decide to stay.

His house is not exactly the TV-land suburban semi that I imagined. The avenue he lives on is tree lined and quiet, with only a few cars – probably aged cars for the children to drive – parked along the road. The grown-up cars reside side by side in married pairs on wide and accommodating driveways.

As we walk down the road I half listen to Michael’s faithful rendition of his favourite scene from
Star Wars
, but my more attentive half takes in huge basement kitchens with stainless-steel hoods presiding over gleaming white worktops, or glimpses of a living-room that has surely never been used for living, with curtains in the same material as the sofa.

I have no idea why I am so fascinated by this other-world lifestyle, so different from mine. Maybe it is because where I grew up houses this big had invariably been turned into flats by the 1960s. Maybe it’s because no one in my family had a car at all after Dad left so there hadn’t even been the possibility that at age seventeen I might be presented with a car myself to park on the street or anywhere else. But more than likely it’s just because I’m nosy, because I’m awestruck that some people really do have lawnmowers you can drive, and others really do go to John Lewis to get soft furnishings that match their sofa.

Mainly, I’m impressed that some people who don’t live in America have swimming-pools in their gardens, judging by the pool-filter van that’s just pulling out of the house up ahead.

Michael takes two steps ahead of me, turns to face me and, walking backwards, says, ‘And then, and
then
right, Darth Vader goes …’ He cups his hands over his mouth to add the required sound effect. ‘“Your powers grow weak, old man. First I was the pupil but now
I
am the master. Ha ha ha ha ha!”’ His hand drops to his side and he falls back in step next to me. ‘And then Obe Wan Kenobe gets killed but he becomes more powerful than when he was alive, so it’s cool.’

This is the sort of thing that might make me wonder how much intellectual stimulus I can expect dating an eighteen-year-old. Except that I’ve been on the receiving end of exactly the same monologue about either
Star Wars
,
Withnail and I
,
Monty Python
,
The Young Ones
,
Blackadder
and, more recently,
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
with so many men of so many different ages and backgrounds that I can’t really pin it on immaturity. Well, not the kind you measure in years anyway. Michael continues.

‘That is a classic, classic moment. I did sort of like episode one, but I do sort of think Lucas shouldn’t have directed it himself, and what about … oh hang, the pool people have come early. I’d just better go and check what they’ve done. Hang on.’

He bounds off to catch the van as it’s turning on to the road. I watch him sign something and confidently pat the van on the side as it drives past me. He stands at the gate of his house waiting for me to walk the last few steps to his side.

His house isn’t a semi-mansion, it is an
actual
mansion, at least in my book. Set in actual ground with an
actual
swimming-pool (now safely netted against autumn leaves) and a summer-house gazebo-type thing in the back. I mean, I thought he was nicely spoken but, well you know, I hadn’t imagined him to be actually
rich
.

Once inside, Michael takes my jacket and hangs it in a double-doored closet in the hallway and leads me into a kitchen so enormous that in the middle there is a central isle of working top for no apparent purpose at all other than to cover a built-in (fully stocked) wine rack. A dark blue glass vase holding those really expensive, almost real-looking, fake sunflowers sits demurely at its centre. Despite the unseemly amount of cupboard space, some of which probably hides a fridge, washing-machine and dishwasher, there is a wrought-iron pan-rack thingy hanging from the ceiling, replete with brass pans that I guess are probably just there for show. Also hanging up are bunches of dried herbs and a large bunch of my arch-rival nemesis, dried lavender, guaranteed to set off an asthma attack if I get too close. I pull my inhaler out of my bag and retreat to a breakfast bar that runs along the wall to french windows that overlook a patio running down to the pool, which precedes the gazebo which hides some sort of secret garden behind.