Growing Up Twice (3 page)

‘This country. Can’t trust anyone,’ Rosie sighs, and I’m not sure who she is referring to.

‘Back to the boy!’ Good, Selin is curious.

‘Well, he just ran up to me, grabbed me and kissed me. Right there in the street! It was kind of sweet really. You know, romantic.’ I can’t help the coy little smile that curls up the edges of my mouth.

‘
Romantic!
’ they cry and grab each other in a mock melodramatic clinch.

‘Wasn’t it sloppy and dribbly?’ Selin asks.

‘No!’

‘Tongue like a Rotavator?’ Rosie enquires in her usual forthright fashion.

‘Certainly not.’

‘Teeth and nose bumping?’ Selin.

‘No. None of that, it was nice, he was good. I mean, look, we all had our first snog at around fifteen, right?’

‘I was eleven,’ Selin said.

‘I was nine,’ Rosie chimed in. ‘Edward Stone, back of the art class.’

‘OK, I had
my
first snog at fifteen.’

‘And eleven months and two weeks. I remember because it was at Cathy Barker’s sixteenth and yours was two weeks later. You snogged that bloke who went mental a couple of years ago. It could have contributed.’ Rosie grinned.

‘His name was Sam Everson and he didn’t go mental, he had a breakdown and it was years later when I didn’t even know him. And my point is, even I, late flowerer that I was, had had three years’ intensive snogging practice by his age. I was pretty good at it by then. So our kiss was accomplished, romantic and even a bit sexy and anyway, god-damnit, I haven’t had a snog in ages and I enjoyed it!’ I’m slightly flushed and the tingle of the Tabasco is melting the back of my throat.

Rosie and Selin look at me. They look at each other. They look at me. Selin purses her lips, getting ready to be maternal.

‘You fancy him,’ she says.

‘I don’t! I’m just saying it was nice!’ I roll my eyes up to the nicotine-coloured ceiling.

‘You fancy him. You fancy him, you do. Please God don’t tell me you’re going to phone him, because I
know
you’re not. You’re not, are you?’ Selin is anxious and I know why. She has seen me merrily trot off, usually in cahoots with Rosie, into one outlandish and disastrous encounter after another. She has been at our respective doors with two bottles of wine and a large bar of chocolate on more occasions than we can remember. When Rosie moved in with me after she split up with her ex, Chris, just after Owen dumped me for the last time, Selin even remarked on the fact that our flat sharing would save her a bus fare at least (and God help the neighbourhood).

‘Of course I’m not!’ I say and I mean it. I’m not. Really.

‘You should,’ Rosie says. ‘You might be his first. You could teach him how to
pleasure a woman
.’ And she says it with a fake French accent.

‘I doubt it very much, if his slutty-looking girlfriend was anything to go by,’ I say, somewhat unfairly, driven by an unhealthy and arbitrary competitive streak. ‘But it doesn’t matter because of course,
of course
, I’m not going to phone him. And if he phones me, I shall be very sweet so as not to drive him to breakdown in later life.’ I look pointedly at Rosie. ‘And I shall say I can’t see him again, thank you very much.’

‘Unless he has two good-looking friends.’

Oh, Rosie.

This morning when I open my eyes, for the first time since spring the electric light from the hallway is casting a yellow glow under my bedroom door. Rosie is up already and autumn is on the way. I can see a chink of blue sky through my curtain, but the cast of the light bulb somehow reminds me of being cold and I turn my back on the window and curl up. Now I can see my phone.

The third requisite day between swapping your phone number and getting the call isn’t, strictly speaking, until tomorrow. I had thought that, being young and presumably impetuous, he might have called me sooner, but I guess they learn the mind tricks even earlier in man development these days. I think he will phone me tomorrow. I don’t mind if he doesn’t phone me. It will be easier in a way. It’s just the waiting. It’s annoying, and even more annoying when you’re waiting for a call from someone you don’t want to call you.

But I’ll leave my mobile switched on, just to get it over with. I mean, I don’t want to have to call him back, do I?

It’s Monday. I imagine Rosie is up before me because she has got today off and a day-long date planned with this man she met through work. They are going boating. It’s an original idea for a date and Rosie likes to be original. Her last first date took place in a yoga class. ‘Well, at least you’d know if he was up to it,’ she had said mysteriously. But apparently he wasn’t, because she had only seen Yoga Date Man the once.

She has this strange superstition that to refer to a man by his actual name, until they have seen each other at least four times, means that the relationship will end prematurely. Consequently I have never learnt the names of very many of her acquaintances. Her ex, Chris, was Total Fox Man the first few times I met him, which I thought was a debatable tag. Self-important Slimy Git Man was how Selin and I referred to him in private, until the shock news of their whirlwind engagement. After that we thought it best to be more polite about him.

I’m not good at mornings, they get me down. I always stay in bed a bit too long, spend a bit too much time over breakfast and a bit too long in the shower. I never
can
find anything clean or nice to wear and it takes me two and a half cups of instant before I can really take in the day. Although I don’t mind my job, because for the first time ever I’m earning a real wage, and the people are nice and I get listened to sometimes, I just sort of stumbled into it rather than found my vocation and usually, just before I open the door to leave in the morning, I take a deep breath and say, ‘Oh well, here we go again.’

Rosie comes out of the bathroom. She looks dreadful: her blonde hair is in tangles, she has dark smudges under her bloodshot eyes, and her face is still creased with the marks of a restless night.

‘I feel awful.’ She slumps against the bathroom door. ‘I’ve been throwing up since dawn.’

‘Oh, poor love, did you get a take-away last night?’ I ask her.

‘No, toast.’ She must feel poorly, she can’t string a sentence together.

‘Booze?’ I ask cautiously, it was my first guess. Over the last week or so I have noticed the effects of her hangovers keep her in the bathroom longer than usual, but she gets sensitive if you mention her drinking and it’s too early to face a fight.

‘No, not a drop.’ She rubs her eyes and tucks her usually silky hair behind an ear. ‘I feel strange.’ I follow her into her room and she sits on the bed.

‘Do you want me to phone thingy and cancel him?’ I offer. It wouldn’t be the first time. Once I told someone she had had to emigrate overnight for legal reasons.

‘Mmm, yes please.’ She gets back into bed and pulls the duvet up under her chin.

‘Jen?’

‘Yes, love?’

‘Mumphalaeneltnt,’ she mumbles.

‘Pardon?’ Three or four deep breaths pass and she repeats herself a little more clearly.

‘I think I might be pregnant.’ A brief moment of horror passes through me and I take a deep breath and calm down. This is probably typical Rosie overdramatics. She couldn’t possibly be sick just because she ate or drank too much.

‘Don’t be silly, you haven’t done it with anyone since the husband, right? And that was months ago.’ I can say this with confidence because we really do know everything about each other’s lives. And if ever there has been something we haven’t told each other for one reason or another we always break the ice by buying each other a Mars Bar. Over the years it has become a symbol for big news. Selin blames our gradual weight gain throughout our twenties on Rosie’s erratic and tumultuous life, which seems fair, as most of the Mars-Bar-related news
has
come from Rosie, with quite a bit from me, and there has been none from Selin for years. And of course Rosie eats what she likes and never puts on a pound.

‘I’ve missed two periods, I’m about to miss a third.’ This comes from under the duvet. Two periods, that’s OK. This girl from work didn’t have a period for a whole year, sometimes it just happens.

‘I think you’re overreacting, Rose. I mean when? Who?’ Personally I think it’s probably stress and a lifestyle that doesn’t exactly bode well for the natural rhythms of the female cycle.

‘Chris!’ The name comes out in a high-pitched little screech. Chris her erstwhile husband, Chris?

‘But, mate, you’ve been living here for eight months. The last time you saw Chris was at that dreadful work party and he was there with his new bird and you said she was fat … although she probably wasn’t, you think anyone over a size eight is fat.’

Another muffled strangulated sound comes from under the covers.

‘Rosie? Come on, tell me.’ A hand appears and fumbles around on the bedside cabinet, around two glasses of stagnant water, a pewter hip flask, an aromatherapy candle, some neatly folded lottery tickets and an empty packet of Hula Hoops, until it finds the edge and then the knob of the drawer. Opening it, the hand disappears briefly and returns clutching a Mars Bar. King size.

‘Oh, Christ,’ I say and immediately unwrap it and take a bite. It’s 7.45 a.m. The ritual now complete, she pushes back the covers and looks at me.

‘I’d check the sell-by date, if I were you, I’ve been meaning to give it to you for weeks.’

‘What happened?’ I say, not sure that I really want to know.

Rosie’s alarm-clock radio clicks on suddenly and the room is filled with the intrusive blare of some dreadful carping ‘breakfast crew posse’. She reaches over, turns it down and leans back against the wall holding her spare pillow to her chest like a child with a toy. I can see she has hardly slept. She must have been thinking about this for weeks, poor love. She rubs her fingers across her tired eyes and begins.

‘Well, it’s mostly like I told you. Remember I had to take some clients to that ridiculous awards ceremony a few weeks ago? I knew that Chris would be there because his team was nominated for Best Child-orientated Campaign which is why I got that new dress and shoes. And bag. And my hair done, purely for the “ha-you-sucker” factor. And of course he
was
there and he brought “her” with him. And she
was
fat, honestly. Or if she wasn’t fat she shouldn’t have worn a skirt that short. Well, he clocked me, of course, and we sent each other a few glares and I was very happily having a few glasses of champagne, because you know it was free, and talking to Yoga Date Man, that’s where I met him, remember? Well, then I went off to “powder my nose” so to speak and …’ She stopped and clapped her hand over her mouth.

We were supposed to have given up cocaine, it was our New Year’s resolution.

‘… But it was free, so it doesn’t count really and anyway it seems that he followed me down the stairs and well when I came out there he was, waiting. Before I knew it he had me back in the ladies’ in a cubicle and we sort of … well … we accidentally had sex.’ She stops talking and looks at me. I can’t think what to say. Part of me is thinking that the months and
months
of us helping each other get over our exes have been for absolutely nothing and I feel angry with her. The other part of me just wants to give her a hug and help her get through it. I go with the hug option for now and decide to save the good-talking-to option for later. I climb into bed with her and put my arms around her.

‘You think I’m a dreadful old slapper, don’t you?’ she sniffs and rests her head on my shoulder. Her hair covers her face but I can tell by her trembling shoulders that she is trying not to cry.

‘Well, yes, but let’s not discuss that now. Come on, darling, it’s OK. You’re on the pill, anyway, so you can’t be pregnant, can you?’ I say softly to the top of her head.

‘That’s what I thought. But the morning before it happened I was sick just after breakfast. A few too many vodkas the night before. I didn’t even think about it affecting my pill working. Not until I was late.’ Well, it was a minor setback but not conclusive proof.

‘Ah, but you always use a condom, because we promised each other, didn’t we?’ That was our New Year’s resolution
circa
1992 and as far as I knew we had always stuck to it. Maybe if taking the pill hadn’t made me blow up like one of those poisonous fishes and turn into a tearful Attila the Hun it would have been harder to stick to but, as successfully integrating into society for at least three weeks out of every four is somewhat essential in the customer-care environment in which I work, I had decided to give the pill a miss and stick to traditional methods instead. Owen used to complain about it a lot, about the interruption, the loss of sensitivity and all that. He used to give me a really hard time in fact. But I just think it’s unfair that when you’re a girl you have to either take chemicals, stick a wire contraption up your bits, fiddle about with a sponge and spermicide or wear an internal version of a sou’wester. I mean, it’s incredible what lengths men have gone to to avoid having to deal with contraception at the business end. If you’re a boy all you have to do is pop a bit of ultra-thin latex on your willy. Just do it and shut up. The three of us have agreed on this countless times, in countless conversations, in countless bars over the years. So you make them use a condom, don’t you?

Don’t you?

‘Not with your ex-husband in the bog when you’re off your face, you don’t.’ Oh well, that blew that theory.

I don’t think Rosie is pregnant. A girl who drinks as much as her and eats as little food, who lives on coffee and is no stranger to illegal narcotics, can’t be that fertile. My sister-in-law gave up everything from alcohol to crisps for two years before she conceived. And besides, Rosie and Chris only did it the once. By the time you get to our age you know it’s actually damn hard to get pregnant, whatever way you look at it. You just don’t tell the teenagers. It’s probably the worry that has stopped her coming on.

‘OK, look, I’ll take the day off sick,’ I say. ‘We’ll go to the pharmacy and get a kit. It’ll be fine, we’ll go to the pub. It’s really hard to get knocked up, you read about it all the time. Girls our age are always missing periods; it’s probably stress, or too much booze or something.’