The Kiss (8 page)

I
t isn’t fair. How can he look like a nightmare and yet still be this hot?

‘What are you doing here anyway?’ he asks, still twiddling. ‘Val give you an extra shift without telling me?’

‘Tab’s first rehearsal. Moral support,’ I say, unable to speak in proper sentences.

‘And are—’

‘Angry boyfriend plus new girlfriend are here as well, yes.’

He replaces the curl on my shoulder and absently starts stroking my earlobe instead. ‘So what’s the plan? I’m guessing you and her have a plan.’

I stand up. ‘The plan is that you don’t do stuff like stroke my ears.’

He raises his hands apologetically. ‘Totally subconscious. Sorry.’

I order my heart to stop thumping. ‘Do you plan to terrify everyone when they get out of the auditorium or are you going to wash your face?’

Tilting his head, he examines his reflection in the plate-glass window behind the sofa. ‘I don’t suppose this show has zombies in it?’

‘Might improve it,’ I say. ‘But sadly it’s directed by an old man for an audience with an average age of sixty-five. You’re more likely to send them all screaming for the doors than commissioning you to do the make-up.’

‘Better put my pretty face back on then.’ He gives me a slow half-skull smile as he unfolds himself from the sofa. The effect is horrific.

‘Any good-looking women in the cast more likely to fall for my boyish charms than you?’ he asks when he is upright.

I probably should mention Tab here. I don’t.

‘Depends how choosy you are,’ I say, folding my arms across my chest.

‘Get back here, Jem!’ Val calls. ‘We have ten minutes to change a barrel before all hell breaks loose.’

Jem does a surprising thing. Encircling my wrists with his fingers he pulls them downwards, placing my arms back by my sides; unlocking me.

‘We’re not all like your ex-boyfriend, you know,’ he says.

As he heads for the bar, people start coming into the lobby, checking their watches: partners, family, friends, all rolling in for a first post-rehearsal drink with the cast. In a matter of minutes, the auditorium doors crash open and a herd of people gallop towards the bar like pigs towards a feeding trough. The volume of noise goes through the roof.

‘Lilah, it was brilliant!’ Tab is before me, her eyes glowing. She is clutching a book of music. ‘I’ve got the
best
songs. And the dialogue is really funny once you get past how wet Hero is. And the others are all lovely, apart from Witch Knickers and Warren who’s totally as creepy as we thought. Desmond’s actually directed
Les Mis
! The repetiteur is the red-haired lady and she’s called Honor and she’s awesome! I can’t believe we’ve only got a month to put it together. Desmond wants us three times a week from next week, plus extra rehearsals for soloists.’

Jem is serving efficiently, all evidence of facepaint gone. Already a cluster of girls are colonizing his end of the bar. ‘I won’t ask what a repetiteur is,’ I say, because it’s important to muster something resembling conversation for my best friend.
We’re not all like your ex-boyfriend, you know
. ‘Do you want a drink?’

‘I’ll get it,’ Tabby says meaningfully.

The action at the bar is as good as a show itself. Sam is already nursing a Coke at a table. Warren is at the end of the bar trying to look down Maria’s shirt while she flirts with Jem. Tabby is being bounced around like a pinball, dropping out of the pressing crowd and jumping back in again with renewed enthusiasm for the game. Desmond the director and Honor the vocal coach are comparing notes with a bottle of red wine and no doubt a nice selection of heart pills. Two good-looking dark-haired guys are clearly into each other over a shared bag of Monster Munch. Older members of the cast sit together by the fruities, nursing pints of bitter and glasses of wine and considering their raucous comrades with curiosity. I feel left out.

‘Pineapple juice,’ Tabby gasps ten minutes later, plonking a half-slopped glass in front of me. ‘I’ve got it too. It’s meant to be good for the voice. Sam’s looking completely miserable, don’t you think?’

‘Warren alert,’ I warn in a low voice.

Warren’s T-shirt is more transparent than ever, thanks to the large, fresh sweat patches front and back. ‘Can I join you?’ he asks.

A kind of madness descends on me like a mist. ‘I haven’t seen my girlfriend in two hours,’ I say, and take Tab’s hand. ‘We’d like some privacy if you don’t mind.’

‘Lilah, you’re so naughty,’ Tab giggles as Warren blushes and leaves. ‘I’m now going to get a reputation as the cast lesbian. I couldn’t get anywhere near Jem just now. Sam being here’s making me really nervous. It feels like I’m being unfaithful all over again every time I look in Jem’s direction. I don’t know how I did it at the college party.’

‘Alcohol,’ I remind her.

‘That must have been it. I’ll have to start smuggling vodka into rehearsals in my water bottle.’ She brightens at the thought. ‘Not a bad idea, actually. We’re rehearsing Thursdays, Fridays AND Saturdays from next week – that’s good, isn’t it? When you’re on the bar you can keep everyone else at bay while I try Jem again.’

‘Sure.’

The lack of enthusiasm in my voice makes her frown. ‘I’m really sorry about earlier,’ she says again. ‘I don’t know what came over me, mouthing off at you like that. Nerves, I guess. I’ll make it up to you, I promise.’

‘You were right,’ I say.

Tabby looks taken aback. ‘I was?’

‘I think,’ I say, staring at my pineapple juice, ‘that I like being in control of stuff. Even when that stuff’s nothing to do with me. That’s not good. Next time I do it, kick me.’ I look up at her again, needing reassurance. ‘Tell me honestly. Do you think I think all guys are like Dave?’

Tabby looks puzzled. ‘In what way?’

‘I mean, out to break my heart?’

Her face clears. ‘Oh! Yes.’

‘Totally not true,’ I say, feeling alarmed.

‘You two were over months ago,’ Tabby says. ‘How many guys have you kissed since then?’

‘If you’d . . . I know what . . . Forget I asked,’ I say, sinking back into my pineapple juice.

Of
course
I don’t think all guys are like Dave. But it’s a basic fact that when Studs is in the equation, some are more like Dave than others.

I take a deep breath.

‘On the subject of Dave, Tab, there’s something I should tell you—’

‘Patricia Luard. How do you do,’ booms a big lady who has suddenly appeared at our sofa. She plumps herself down next to Tab with a certain amount of force, so Tabby and I both bounce gently upwards. ‘Desmond’s always frightfully keen that the company mingles, so here I am. Mingling. Eunice and I – that’s Eunice over there, floral blouse – Eunice and I have been doing Desmond’s shows for donkeys.’

‘You do the show for donkeys?’ repeats Tabby in surprise.

‘Sometimes,’ Patricia agrees, slapping her knees. ‘Half of them forget to turn their hearing aids on; another twenty per cent are snoring by the second scene. Someone died once. Mind you, that year we had a shocking lead soprano. EUNICE! Meet and greet!’

The polar opposite to Patricia, Eunice is petite and slim and dressed in the aforementioned floral blouse plus a soft beige cashmere cardie.

‘Tabitha, isn’t it?’ Patricia continues after Eunice has been introduced. ‘Lovely bit of casting. You’ll make a splendid Hero, although I’m sorry she’s wetter than the Pacific Ocean. Who’s your friend?’

‘This is Delilah,’ says Tabby.

I give a rictus smile as Patricia launches into The Song. ‘Ah, dear Tom,’ she says as she brings the chorus to its usual toe-curling conclusion. ‘One of the best lovers I ever had.’

Tab chokes into her pineapple juice. I almost do the same.

‘Don’t shock the youngsters, Patricia,’ says Eunice in a high, pleasant voice.

Patricia offers up the kind of wink that almost dislocates her eyelid. ‘Warren tells me you two are lesbians?’

Patricia and Eunice are unexpectedly fun. I don’t ask if they met Mum during all their years of amateur dramatics because they probably did and I don’t want to go there much. Eunice tells us she never married but once travelled on a camel across the Sahara. Patricia was widowed in the hurricane of 1987 when a falling tree smashed her rich husband’s car in half. I’m impressed by their real-sounding lives. I’ve never met old people like this before. I might have met a few more if Mum had stuck around. Dad doesn’t do parties.

‘Let me buy you both a proper drink,’ Patricia says.

‘We’re only sixteen,’ says Tabby timidly.

‘It’s high time you were corrupted then, isn’t it?’

Close to two hours later and we are on the same sofa. Tabby is definitely drunk and I am feeling woozy. Loads of the am-drammers are still in the bar. Maria is ordering Fanta refills; Sam is chatting to Desmond the director;
Rich and Henry the Monster Munchers are looking cosy in a corner by the auditorium doors. Warren has disappeared. After an unpromising start, this has turned into an excellent evening.

‘More drinks,’ Patricia announces at half-past ten. ‘It’ll be last orders soon.’ She considers Jem at the bar. ‘Shame the barman’s young enough to be my gardener.’

‘Lilah likesh him,’ Tabby slurs. ‘Kished him a few dayshago.’

We have sorted out the lesbian thing. They have both promised not to tell Warren.

‘You kissed him too!’ I protest, flushing.

‘An’ I gotta do it again. Gotta get Aphrodite’s Kiss. Gotta get Sham back.’ She aims her forefingers at me in a sloshed-gunslinger kind of way.

‘
More drinks
,’ Patricia repeats, banging the table.

‘Better not.’ There is the small matter of Dave that I still need to discuss with Tab. In my new state of self-awareness, I know that if I don’t do it tonight, I might not do it at all.

‘G’on,’ mumbles Tabby, propped up on the table with her face resting against her cider bottle.

‘We’ve got college tomorrow,’ I say. I sound as square as a piece of processed cheese.

‘Tosh,’ Patricia says. ‘It’s Eunice’s round. Eunice! Don’t forget the peanuts!’

T
he bank tries to contact me on Friday morning but I ignore the call, partly because my head is killing me and partly because my cheeks still burn at the memory of my interview with Egg Face last week. I don’t know how people drink and then have normal days afterwards. As far as I can tell, it’s impossible.

I don’t need a bank account, I have decided. Cash is easier to keep track of, provided of course that no one nicks it, or makes you spend it on bottles of cider and packets of Hula Hoops like Patricia and Eunice last night. I have a cheese sandwich and a glass of water for lunch at college because it’s the cheapest option. It’s hard work, keeping the cheese sandwich down.

‘Sounds like a top evening,’ says Oz as we sit on the college steps after lunch, preparing ourselves for the final push that will get us to Friday night. ‘Can I come next time?’

‘Yes, please come Oz,’ says Tabby. ‘You can flirt with Maria while I—’

She stops. We haven’t shared the Aphrodite Plan with Oz. It’s a bit too weird. Even Tab can see that. Besides, it would probably break his bouncy little heart, to hear about her intentions of re-kissing the guy who dashed his hopes at the start-of-term party.

‘Just . . . flirt with Maria,’ Tabby fudges. ‘So I can concentrate on, um, talking to Sam. Next rehearsal is in a week’s time.’

‘I’ll do my best, assuming my social services aren’t engaged elsewhere,’ Oz says. ‘Delilah, any chance of—’

‘No free crisps,’ I say firmly. ‘I’ve only worked there two nights.’

He recalibrates. ‘How about we get into training and drink there tonight?’

‘I’m
never
drinking again,’ I declare. ‘And no disrespect to my place of employment, but outside rehearsal nights you’ll be hanging with a bunch of pinstriped bad boys fresh from the nearby insurance office.’

‘Get
down
, girlfriend,’ says Oz, doing a wrist-flick finger snap that almost takes his eye out.

‘It’s too bad your weekend nights are all workworkwork, Lilah,’ Tabby complains.

‘Got to make the money somehow,’ I say as lightly as I can.

My massive over-expenditure still hurts. I remember something to cheer myself up a bit.

‘You’ll like this, Oz,’ I say. ‘My French friend Fatima emailed me this morning. She’s coming to visit in a
couple of weeks.’

I’ve known Fatima since Year Ten, when we started emailing each other as part of an inter-school language project. I’d email her in English and she’d email me back in French. Being the kind of girl that Fatima is, I swiftly learned more rude French expressions than my French teacher could translate. In return, Fatima learned a lot of random science facts, including a first-hand account of how to burn an almost perfect hole in a living-room carpet.

‘I stayed with her this summer,’ I go on. ‘This will be her first time in England. And unless we fix up end-to-end parties for her, she’ll announce that England is boring and catch the next flight home.’

‘Hot or not?’ Oz asks.

I frown at him. ‘I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that, you sexist pig. She’ll be a brain surgeon before she’s twenty-five, assuming she hasn’t started running a small South American country in the intervening period.’

‘I like her already,’ Oz says. ‘Leave everything to me. I may only have been at this place for a couple of weeks, but I’m already the go-to guy.’

‘You were so lucky to get Fatima on that project, Lilah,’ Tabby says. ‘I got Didier the Invisible.’

I snort. ‘He never returned a single email, did he? You had to make up his life for the project.’

Tabby giggles. ‘I turned him into a surfer dude with an opera-singing mother and a Dalmatian called Oui Oui.’

‘How did I miss this project?’ Oz demands. ‘Was there coursework?’

‘You didn’t do French GCSE second time round,’ I point out.

He looks relieved. ‘You know more about my life than I do. OK, ready to make up for lost time. When’s she coming?’

‘Just before half-term. She’ll be here for Tab’s show.’

Tab looks a little greener than she already is. ‘I’m spending this afternoon’s free period learning my lines. Well, that and probably throwing up in a library bin. I feel like an old pair of pants. There is
so
much to learn.’

‘And there are
so
many parties to organize,’ says Oz happily. ‘This French girl will have parties coming out of her delicate little ears.’ He pauses. ‘They are delicate, right?’

He’s one to ask. I let him sweat on the question. It coincides with an urgent need to heave.

Jem is whistling at the till as we load up the change in the bar on Friday afternoon. The sound goes through my head like a fire engine. My hangover has mostly gone, but I still feel threadbare and very, very tired.

I go into the cellar to fetch up a crate of J2O and order my thoughts. It isn’t easy. In my exhaustion, I can’t avoid the fact that I have a crush the size of an elephant on this guy.

He’s friends with Studs, I remind myself. He eyed Tab’s bottom the other night like a fox checking a chicken for plumpness and all-round digestibility
and he is friends with Studs
. I can’t let the Lust Labrador win.

Coming up from the cellar, I dump the crate on the bar top while avoiding his eyes.

‘I want to ask you something,’ I say.

‘As long as it’s not about moons again.’

‘How do you know Studs?’

He rips the excess receipt paper off the top of the swipe machine. ‘I’ve known him since we were eleven. We started hanging out from the first detention we ever shared, when we got done for tagging the science block.’

‘Touching,’ I say. I am heavy on the sarcasm.

‘He can be an idiot but he’s basically OK.’

‘You know he deals drugs?’

Jem’s eyes get a shuttered look about them. ‘That’s why he’s an idiot.’

I shouldn’t be surprised that he knows this, although there’s a part of me that’s disappointed. ‘Do you see much of him?’

‘Why am I getting the third degree?’

‘Do you?’ I persist.

‘We hang out a couple of times a month. We have each other’s back.’

‘Even when he deals? Goes against your tell-it-straight approach, don’t you think?’

Jem loads the fridge with the J2Os. ‘Studs knows how I am so he doesn’t tell me anything he doesn’t want me to know. It’s your turn to talk now. Tell me about your ex.’

The trouble with trying to make a conversation go in one direction lies with how, when it goes somewhere
else, you’re like an ant when a leaf falls into its path. Every part of your brain is focused on the
other
conversation,
the conversation you
want
to have, so invariably the conversation you
actually
have turns into a bad-dream-dance-show disaster.

‘I don’t want to talk about him,’ I say stiffly.

‘Who did you catch him with? Was it someone you knew? That’s always the worst.’

‘I SAID, I don’t want to talk about him,’ I repeat.

And then I talk about him.

‘He was with his girlfriend, if you must know. They’d been together for years before he talked me into going out with him. Apparently I was a blip.’

The panicky sense of earth shifting beneath my feet hasn’t got any less, even though it’s been a while since the Big Reveal. And right now, I feel more disorientated than ever. I really,
really
should have practised on Tabby first.

‘A blip?’ he repeats, pulling a face. ‘Nice.’

His sympathy doesn’t help. I feel the size of a gnat.

‘I’m going to see if your mum needs help unloading the dishwasher,’ I mumble.

He is waiting for me when I come back with eight clean wine glasses dangling among my fingers and thumbs like long glass bells. They tinkle gently against each other.

‘Is he called Dave?’ Jem says.

I feel like he has just smashed the glasses in my hands and gashed me with them. ‘You know him?’ I ask, shocked bloodless.

‘I’ve come across him a couple of times. He’s done it before, with other girls. Studs is his dealer, right? Actually, don’t answer that.’

OK. OK. Breathe
. ‘What do you mean, he’s done it with other girls?’ I manage.

He is looking deep into my poo-coloured eyes. ‘Do you want me to stop talking about this?’

‘What do you mean,
he’s done it with other girls
?’ I repeat.

‘Put the wine glasses down,’ Jem instructs, looking slightly alarmed. ‘On second thoughts, give them to me.’

I let him remove the wine glasses from my fingers. My body has gone into shut-down and is refusing to do anything I am asking of it.

‘Studs has intervened before,’ Jem says, setting the glasses on a shelf. ‘He doesn’t like the games Dave plays. I’m guessing he gave you a message telling you to meet the guy at so-and-so place at blah o’clock. You turned up and caught him with his girlfriend. I truly am sorry.’

A dam bursts inside me. I realize, to my horror, that I have started bawling like a mandrake pulled from its pot. Jem’s arms come around me and he holds me like you maybe hold a half-drowned kitten when you pull it from the water butt, gently and carefully while trying not to get too wet.

‘Why do I get the feeling you’ve never talked about this before?’ he asks over my head.

I howl more loudly and bury my face deeper into his T-shirt. His arms are warm, and as long as they are there, the demons cringe and keep their distance.

‘Keep crying and the customers will all run away,’ he says.

I pull away from him, wiping my nose most attractively on the sleeve of my jumper. True enough, a couple of anxious-looking punters are taking an acute interest in the pantomime posters stuck on the pinboard. ‘I have to . . .’ I point hopelessly in the direction of the toilets.

Oh hecky peck
, I think, limping to the bathroom to wash my face. He is as hot as a chilli pepper while I am a brainless, hungover fool with no more street sense than an ant.

I am in so much trouble.