Then and Always

Long after the screaming had stopped, when the only sound to be heard was the soft crying of my friends as they waited for the ambulance to arrive, I realized that I was still clutching the lucky penny tightly within my palm. My fingers refused to unfurl from around the tiny copper talisman, as though by sheer will alone I would somehow be able to wind back time and erase the tragedy around me.

Was it really only half an hour earlier that Jimmy had picked up the glinting coin from the restaurant’s tarmacked car park?

“For luck,” he had said with a grin, tossing the coin up in the air and deftly catching it with one hand.

I smiled back and then saw the flicker of irritation flash through his pale blue eyes as Matt quipped, “Jimmy, mate, you should’ve said if you’re a little short of cash, no need to go groveling about on the ground for money!”

Matt had laughed then, and thrown his arm around my shoulder, pulling me close to his side. I thought the darkening
expression on Jimmy’s face was a natural reaction to Matt’s unnecessary comment, which highlighted the differences between their backgrounds. And maybe that was part of it. But it wasn’t all of it. There was more … though of course I didn’t understand that for a long time.

The three of us were standing in the fading sunlight of a warm September evening, waiting for the rest of our group to arrive. Jimmy had already been in the car park when Matt and I had driven in. Matt had made quite a show of circling the empty spaces, looking for just the right spot to park his new acquisition. I guess he was still in that strange honeymoon phase boys have when they’re really in love with their cars. I just hoped he’d have the good sense not to gloat about it too much in front of the rest of the group.

The new car was shiny, sporty, and expensive. That’s as much as I know about cars. He’d been given it by his parents when the exam results had come out. That alone should tell you enough about Matt’s family to understand why comments about money sometimes hit a raw nerve with the rest of us. For the most part, Matt was fairly considerate and didn’t rub it in too much. But the odd glib remark occasionally slipped under the wire and lit a spark. I hoped he wasn’t going to say anything that would ruin what was probably going to be one of the last nights we would all be spending together for quite a while.

“You’ve been at work today, Jimmy?” I asked, knowing full well that he had but anxious to steer things back onto neutral ground. Jimmy turned and gave me the smile that I swear hadn’t changed at all since he was four years old.

“Yep, this is my last week helping out my uncle; after that I’m happily handing back the wheelbarrow and the pitchfork. The gardening world and I are about to part company.”

“Still, look at the bright side: you’ve got a great tan this summer—you’d not have got that stacking shelves in the supermarket.”

And it was true, Jimmy’s normally fair skin was a soft golden brown, and his forearms were definitely more sinewy and defined from months of outdoor work. Of course, Matt and I were both still sporting fairly decent suntans ourselves from our holiday in France at his parents’ villa. That too had been another congratulatory gift—for both of us.

Actually, my dad had taken issue with us over the trip. Sure, he liked Matt well enough; he was a fairly familiar fixture around our house, and we
had
been dating for almost two years. But it had still been touch and go whether he’d allow me to go away for a fortnight with Matt’s family. Part of it had been the money thing, because, of course, Matt’s parents had refused to accept any payment for the trip. The other part—the big part—had been the dad-daughter-boyfriend thing. I guess that’s universal with dads, but it seemed even more so in our case, with no mum around to smooth things over. Eventually Matt and I had managed to persuade him, explaining how everything was going to be all aboveboard, how it was strictly separate bedrooms and that we’d be with Matt’s parents the whole time. Basically, we lied.

This chain of thought had made me wonder, and not for the first time, how Dad was going to cope when the time came for me to leave for university at the end of the month. I felt a frown forming and determinedly pushed the thought away. I’d spent most of the summer struggling with that, and I was
not
going to ruin the last evening with my friends by worrying over things I couldn’t change.

Two cars, both considerably older than Matt’s but no less appreciated by their owners, pulled into the restaurant’s car
park. The rear door of the small blue car nearest to us flung open, and Sarah ran over in a clatter of improbably high heels. She tottered alarmingly over the uneven surface before enveloping me in a huge hug.

“Rachel, my lovely, how are you?”

I hugged her back, feeling momentarily choked up as I realized that soon I’d be seeing her only during the uni holidays and not every day. Apart from Jimmy, she was my oldest friend. And however close Jimmy and I were, and had always been, there were still some topics of conversation that were reserved only for your girlfriends.

“Sorry we’re late,” Sarah apologized.

I gave her a wry smile. Sarah was
always
late. For a girl so naturally pretty, she required an incredible amount of time to get ready to go out, with multiple hair and outfit changes before she could be persuaded to step away from the mirror. And she never seemed satisfied with the final effect, which was ridiculous, because with her heart-shaped face, shiny brown curls, and petite frame, she always looked perfectly lovely.

“Have you been waiting long?” she asked, slipping her arm through mine and pulling me away from Matt across the car park to the restaurant’s entrance. This was most likely to ensure that she made it in one piece across the tarmac with those ridiculously high stilettos, although it could have been to avoid watching Trevor and Phil’s knee-jerk reaction to Cathy as she climbed out of the car beside them.

“Just long enough for Matt to piss Jimmy off,” I replied in a voice low enough for only her to hear. She smiled knowingly.

“Oh, no time at all then!”

By now we had reached the patioed doorway at the rear
of the restaurant and stood waiting while the boys (Matt included) tried to pretend that they were not noticing the extremely inviting cleavage displayed by Cathy’s low-cut top. Wearing as well a pair of skintight jeans and high-heeled sandals—which, to Sarah’s chagrin, she appeared to have no difficulty walking in—Cathy looked as though she were off to a photo shoot. Long blond hair fell around her shoulders and everything about her seemed so perfectly put together that I instantly felt as though I’d got dressed in the dark with clothes that’d been thrown out from a charity shop.

Cathy had been a relatively late addition to our circle of friends. Prior to her arrival into our sixth form, our group had been a tight unit of Sarah and me and the four boys. I suppose the boy-girl ratio had been a bit unbalanced, but we’d all been mates for so long that it wasn’t an issue. That said, Cathy’s slow inclusion into our group had been welcomed quite vigorously by most of the boys, for obvious reasons. And, looks aside, Cathy was good fun to have around. Her family had moved to Great Bishopsford from a much larger town, and she had seemed much more worldly and clued up than the rest of us. Added to that, she was extremely open and friendly and had a wicked sense of humor, and, when she wasn’t flirting outrageously with every male within a five-mile radius, I actually really liked her.

Sarah, though, had her reservations, and on more than one occasion, when Cathy had ruffled her feathers or stepped on her toes, I had heard her mutter darkly, “Last in. First out.”

When Jimmy sauntered across the car park to join us, Sarah stepped to one side and began to peruse the menu displayed inside a glassed-in case by the doorway. The others had walked over to admire Matt’s car, or Cathy’s chest, I thought waspishly, as I watched her bend down low, supposedly
to examine the alloy wheels. As if she cared about wheels!

“You look much nicer than her,” Jimmy whispered into my ear, knowing instantly what was on my mind.

“Am I that easy to read?” I asked, smiling back up at him. He gave me the grin I knew so well, the one that crinkled up the corners of his eyes and lit up his whole face.

“Like a book,” he confirmed, “but a good one.”

“Like a battered old paperback, you mean, rather than a glossy magazine.”

He followed my eyes and my analogy as we looked across to where Cathy was standing with Matt, listening raptly while he extolled something or other about the car.