Student (5 page)

‘OK. Fancy a go on the swings?’

At the far end of the garden, away from the party, are a set of double swings with peeling green paint, from Dom and Zoe’s childhood. We swing gently, passing the spliff, enjoying each other’s company without saying much. The joint’s even stronger than the last one, harsh on the throat. I offer Aidan my drink to help him wash it down. He takes one sip and spits it out.

‘I don’t drink alcohol.’

‘Why not?’

‘I like to stay in control.’

‘Very admirable,’ I say, though I don’t know how his sobriety squares with the joint we’re sharing. There goes my plan to get Aidan drunk and seduce him. Dope makes me randy, but doesn’t have that effect on guys. They need booze to loosen their inhibitions. I’m not drunk. I’m floating. Within the warm, throbbing membrane that is my brain, my mind feels ultra clear. I like Aidan. I like that he’s a man of a few words. I want him.

‘Do you want to go inside?’ I say. He shakes his head.

‘I prefer it out here.’

I should add, ‘I meant upstairs,’ but girls don’t say that kind of thing. At least, I don’t. And Zoe’s lot are pretty wild. The bedrooms are probably all occupied. I can hear a rustle in the darkness that may easily be a couple fucking. There’s another huge cheer. Somebody else is being carried out of the party, this time to the pond. Aidan winces.

‘Do you want to go to mine?’ I say. ‘I live across The Common. It’s just me at the moment. My mum’s in Spain.’

‘I can’t leave Huw,’ he says. ‘I’m staying at his.’

Should I be hearing warning bells? Part of me admires his loyalty, his diffidence. Most blokes would dump their friends at the first hint of a casual fuck.

‘We can come back later.’ Does this sound like begging?

‘OK,’ he says.

It’s a balmy evening. People are coming and going and nobody pays any attention as we head out of the side gate onto the street and into The Common. I start to head uphill, hoping we’ll have enough conversation for the fifteen minute walk. I can already sense that Aidan’s getting cold feet.

‘Wait,’ he says.

‘What?’

‘Let’s walk on the beach. I like the beach at night.’

‘Me too.’

This isn’t what I had in mind but maybe it’s a better idea than rushing him into bed. Good things are worth waiting for, I persuade myself, and Aidan doesn’t seem like the sort of bloke who can be rushed into anything. We stumble over stubble and he takes my arm to hold me steady. My hand slips into his and stays there. A moon, nearly full, slips from behind the clouds. At the bottom of The Common, we cross a road, go down a lane, and we have the whole beach to ourselves. The sea is far away.

‘What’s that island over there?’ Aidan asks.

‘Hilbre. You can walk over there at low tide. I’ve done it a couple of times.’

‘Shall we?’ His tone is more playful than serious, but I answer seriously.

‘You don’t start from here. And there are patches of quicksand. It’s not safe in the dark.’

‘Call this dark?’

We walk along the beach, but not for long. After a while, we sit on a rock, look at the moon, listen to the distant sea, our arms around each other. The kiss, when it comes, feels natural. There’s another. And another. His kisses are soft, moist, smokey. He doesn’t try to feel me up. Nor does he suggest that we lie on the tufty grass at the edge of the sand.

After a while, he pulls away.

‘We ought to go back,’ he says.

I stop myself from asking ‘why?’ He’s older than me, and more sober, so I stand up as he does and we walk back up to Zoe’s, holding hands. I mean to suggest again that he could stay at mine tonight but haven’t worked up the nerve yet. Don’t rush a good thing, I keep warning myself. Aidan stops holding my hand and gets out another spliff. I don’t know why he needs it when we’re having such a good time already. Without a drink to wash it down, the smoke is acrid and brittle, making me splutter. I hardly have time to pass it back before I’m gagging. Then I’m puking up on the sand. Not a full upchuck, but a pint or so of rum and coke mixed with party pizza — a melange fully illuminated by the romantic moonlight.

Aidan pulls a handkerchief from the front right pocket of his jeans. An old-fashioned, white linen hanky. I didn’t know anyone still used them any more. I wipe my mouth. My clothes are OK. All of the mess is on the sand. I’m mortified. I haven’t thrown up at a party since I was fifteen.

‘Are you OK?’

‘Fine. It went down the wrong way. I suddenly feel very sober though. And embarrassed.’

‘Don’t be.’ He smiles. ‘You seem like one of those people who hardly ever lets go.’

‘There’s some truth in that.’ I pause, waiting to hear some more of his insights into me, but that’s all I’m getting. So I ask about him.

‘Why did you drop out?’

He doesn’t answer at first. I’m about to say something, anything else, when he tells me.

‘I was in hospital for six months.’

‘What happened?’ He doesn’t answer and I realise that it was a mental thing, so try to make it easy for him.

‘Depression?’

I know about depression, kind of. My mum claims to suffer from it and self-medicates with alcohol, except when she’s on the wagon.

‘Not exactly. A kind of breakdown. It’s complicated. Huw and I were...’

His mobile rings and he answers it at once. ‘Yeah, sorry. I’m on the beach. I’ll be five minutes at most. Sorry. Right.’

He puts the phone away. ‘My lift’s waiting for me.’

It’s only midnight. I feel closer to him after he told me about the breakdown and I want to invite him to stay at mine. But he’s just watched me puke up and he has white linen hankies that his mum has ironed. And he has to leave a party at midnight when he’s twenty-one years old.

‘Am I going to see you again?’ I ask.

He doesn’t look at me as he replies. ‘When you get back to the party, they’ll talk about me and Huw. You won’t want to see me after you’ve heard.’

That’s such a weird thing to say that I don’t take it in.

‘Why don’t you give me your number?’ I say, as we walk up the hill. ‘Then I can decide.’

‘I don’t have a pen.’

Neither do I. I tell Aidan my mum’s surname and the road we live on, ask him to call me. The hospital thing and the last cryptic exchange has unnerved me a little. He’s a little distant. So what? I tell myself. I can be a little distant myself. Of course, if you meet your ideal boyfriend, there has to be a price to pay, a hurdle or two to leap. As we turn onto Zoe’s street, I ask for his email address even though I know I’ll forget it in minutes.

Huw’s dad is waiting, engine running. Aidan gets in the back of the car without kissing me, without saying goodnight. Huw stares straight ahead. They drive off and I go back into the party, where dance music has been replaced by heavy metal. Or maybe it’s thrash metal. I’m not very good on the subgenres of cock-rock. I hurry upstairs where the bathroom, miracle of miracles, is free, and has a lock that works. I wash my mouth out and — gross, I know — steal somebody’s electric toothbrush to get the vomit taste off my teeth. I borrow some of Zoe’s mascara to freshen up and am almost done when there’s a fierce pounding on the door. I open it and one of the rugby player types barges past me, then begins puking into the toilet bowl.

The kitchen is crowded and drink is at a premium. I pour myself a mug of tap water and, not seeing anyone I want to talk to, slide back out into the garden. Zoe’s still there, with the gang from our year. I’m about to join them when I realise that they’re talking about Aidan.

‘I couldn’t live with what Aidan did.’ Phil.

‘People can live with anything.’ Jo.

‘It was as much Huw’s fault, egging him on.’ Tom.

‘He’s not the same, Huw, since it happened.’ Jo.

‘I heard he’s got religion.’ Phil.

‘Bit late for that.’ Jo.

‘At least he’s going back to uni,’ Zoe says. ‘Aidan just sits in his room all day, that’s what his mum told me.’

‘How come you spoke to Aidan’s mum?’ Jo asks.

‘They’re old family friends,’ Zoe says, giving nothing away.

‘Maybe Allison figures she can cure him,’ Jo says.

‘Did I hear my name being taken in vain?’ I interrupt, before anyone notices me eavesdropping. It’s never good to overhear conversations about yourself. They tell you that in all the manuals and pre-twentieth century novels. Tom turns to Zoe.

‘Did anyone tell Allison about Aidan?’

‘I was going to,’ Zoe says, addressing her reply to me. ‘But I thought he might tell you himself and I didn’t want you to, you know, prejudge him.’

‘Because he had a breakdown?’

‘Is that what he called it?’ Phil sniggers. ‘The guy’s a walking car crash.’

‘Fuck off, Phil,’ Zoe says.

‘What?’ Phil, drunk, can’t see what the problem is with his humour.

‘I’m trying to tell Allison something serious. Fuck off and roll us a spliff. She’ll need one afterwards.’

It’s the last thing I need, but Phil and Tom fade away, followed by Jo. Zoe explains.

‘It’s to do with what caused the breakdown,’ she says. ‘I used to go out with Aidan, on and off, I don’t know if he told you. We split up when he went to uni.’

‘He told me,’ I say. ‘But there was something else he wouldn’t tell me. He said I’d find out as soon as I got back.’

Zoe’s words come out in a rush. ‘Last summer, after Aidan passed his test, he and Huw drove around a lot. They were always great mates and I could never understand why they got on so well, but anyway... they started playing this game. I’m surprised you didn’t hear about it.’

Something about a car crash starts coming back to me. Playing chicken.

‘They would drive as close as they could to the car in front, so close that, if the car in front braked at all, the bumpers would meet. The idea was to freak the car in front out. Since they couldn’t stop, they’d have to swerve off the road, or drive so fast they outpaced Aidan and Huw.’

I say nothing. This dumb story is only heading in one direction.

‘They did it for a few weeks before it went wrong. An elderly couple drove off the road, into a tree. He broke his neck, died instantly. She was saved by the airbag but broke her spine. Paralysed from the waist down.’

‘Shit.’ Led Zeppelin come on. Nearby, a woman opens a bedroom window, yells for somebody to turn the music down. No-one does.

‘Aidan had a breakdown afterwards. He got off lightly in court. Suspended sentence for dangerous driving. Banned for ten years.’

‘And Huw?’

‘He wasn’t prosecuted. His parents paid for a good lawyer who advised him not to say anything about anything to anyone. He used to go and see Aidan every week in hospital. Did Aidan tell you any of this?’

I shake my head. ‘He said I’d find out and afterwards and then I wouldn’t want to see him again.’

‘And do you?’

‘I don’t know.’ I hesitate. I’m freaked out, but want to say something nice to Zoe, who clearly cares about Aidan. ‘He talked about you. He seems very fond of you.’

‘I love Aidan, but more like family, you know? He’s very naive in some ways. With the car crash, I doubt it ever occurred to him that anybody could get hurt.’

I find myself thinking aloud. ‘You make him sound like a dead loss.’

‘I just want you to know what you’re getting into if you go out with him. He needs to heal. You’d be really good for him, Allison. He’s a fantastic guy when you get to know him.’

She’s still a little in love with Aidan, I see, but I can’t blame her for that. I like that she’s looking out for him. Funny how I like Zoe much more since we left school, since her dad tried to rape me.

‘You enjoy a rescue mission. Mark was such a fuck-up before he went out with you. As soon as you dumped him he landed Miss Junior High!’

I laugh. Do I like a rescue mission? What does that make me, if I’m drawn to fucked-up guys? Mark wasn’t all that fucked-up. He was lonely and angry, like half the people at this party.

‘Will you see Aidan again?’

‘That’s up to him. I gave him my number. If he can’t remember it, he can always get it off you.’

The boys return with the joint. I sidle off before it comes to me. I take the long way home, even though it’s a moonlit night and I’d be home in half the time if I walked across The Common. There are nutters in the world, and you don’t put yourself at risk unless you really, really have to. I think about Aidan and whether I could accept what he did — taking one life and ruining another. I wonder whether he can accept himself. I doubt that he’ll call, but what if he does? We made a connection. Good people do bad things. You have to cut everyone a break from time to time if you’re going to get by in this world. Also, I think he’s gorgeous.

On the debit side, there’s something bleak about him. I know that empty look. I’ve felt like that myself sometimes, like, when you get to basics, nothing mean anything. That emptiness is what allowed him and Huw to drive like devils. And I can see how easily that nullity, that despair, could suck me in. It’s not my job to rescue him, I decide. It’s his job to rescue himself. If he can do that, then I’ll go out with him.

Summer ends abruptly, three weeks before the start of term. My job ends too. I was covering for holiday leave, but everyone’s back. So are Mark and Helen, with their Ibiza tans. I meet them for a drink in the Black Horse.

‘Aren’t you going off somewhere?’ Mark asks.

‘Maybe,’ I say. ‘It’s complicated.’

‘Have you met someone?’ Helen asks, for I never get Mark on his own these days. After a wobble earlier in the year, they have become that obnoxious thing, the perfect, prematurely middle-aged couple. Both got their grades and are following me to Nottingham next month. Hip hip hooray.

‘Sort of,’ I say, ‘but I’m not sure he’s the Ibiza type.’ And I’m not sure that I am. In my gang, such as it is, I was always the last one to do everything, smoke weed, take e, lose my virginity, and I still haven’t been on a holiday abroad with my mates, never mind with a boyfriend. Mark and I did take a tent to the Lake District once, but I haven’t left the UK since Mum and Dad took me to France when I was thirteen.

Whereas half my year at uni have been to Africa or Thailand. Sensing my discomfort, Mark switches the conversation to Nottingham. I go on to autopilot, thinking about what I’ll say in my email to Aidan when I get home. He got my email address off Zoe and started writing to me every day. Sometimes there are several emails waiting when I get back from work. This has been going on since the party but I haven’t met him since then. He never phones, either. When I call him, the awkward silences make me understand why. I don’t want to push it. He’s been through a lot. Accident. Hospital. Everyone looking at him weirdly. I don’t tell Mark and Helen that I’m into him. That might jinx our chances and Aidan’s jinxed enough already.