Vintage (8 page)

The coffee shop was full all morning after that, mostly of people their age who'd seen Kyle through the window, as well as a few local shoppers. Mrs L was smiling, and Marilyn was running from kitchen to counter, making sure her feet didn't show. Nobody seemed to want food much, just biscuits and strange cakes, and Mrs L did the complicated things, sighing and tutting. At one o'clock Mrs L looked at her watch.

“I can take over from here. You've been so slow this morning. It's like you've never been here before! I'll see you tomorrow for the breakfasts. But don't come back in those shoes.”

“Right.” Marilyn headed for the door.

“Don't you want paying?” Mrs L went to the till and pulled out some of the strange money, little notes and coins. She gave it to Marilyn.

“And bring your apron next time!”

Kyle and Marilyn set off up the hill to Holly's house. There was nobody in. They went into the kitchen and helped themselves to bread and cheese, then took the sandwiches upstairs to Holly's bedroom. Marilyn still couldn't get used to him coming in there, but he said they needed to do the project research. She couldn't understand what he meant.

The library was the place for books, surely?

The girl and I go in through the kitchen door. Marilyn's mother is cooking again. Always in the kitchen.

“You're late for your dinner,” she says, without looking up from the frying pan. Which is swimming in fat. Disgusting.

The table's laid for four, with the cloth and everything.

“Hello Mrs Bolton,” says the girl.

“Sheila!” says the mother. Now at least I know her name.

“I've brought Sheila back – for lunch,” I say. Not with much confidence.

Marilyn's mother looks down at the four chops in the pan. One for me, one for her, one for the brat, one for the dad.

“Lunch.” She sounds despairing.

“Really, it's no bother, I'll go home,” says Sheila, catching the way things are going.

“No, don't worry. You set another place at the table, Marilyn. Dinner's nearly ready. There's plenty.”

But she doesn't sound happy.

We get through the meal somehow. The mother sits there. Eating vegetables covered in brown sticky gravy. There's a space on her plate where the chop should be. Seems like passive aggressive to me. She keeps cutting up the veg totally loudly.

I cut my chop very small. Eat it with the vegetables. So I can't taste it so much. Soggy. They've never heard of al dente and vitamins. Sheila's talking away. About her mum and dad. They're totally perfect. Run her life. Without expecting her to have her own ideas.

“And Mum says I can work in the café till I get a job at the bank. Dad says that's the right place for a girl to be if she's not going to get married straight away and have a family.”

Sheila pauses. Looks at me. Goes red.

“None of this going to university then,” says Marilyn's mother. She picks at a piece of carrot. Looks hard at me.

“No, my dad says I can't go, they can't spare me,” says Sheila. I feel sick. Not used to eating meat. Can't say I'm a vegetarian to these people. The mum's welcome to my chop. But I couldn't explain. They wouldn't understand.

“What do you think of that, Marilyn?” the dad says. Looks at me. Half smiling. Half serious.

Now they're both staring. ”Do you think we can spare you?”

“Marilyn will get a grant and everything – you won't have to pay anything, she told me. Loads of girls from school are going,” says Sheila.

She seems to be trying to rescue me.

“I don't hold with it, not for girls,” says the dad. Like he's god or something.

“No boy likes a girl who's clever,” says the mum, laughing. “Do they, Geoffrey?”

“Who knows what she'd get up to? Better to stay here and get a job, where we can keep an eye.”

“I've got to go,” I say. Louder than I mean to.

The brother joins in now.

“She's too stupid anyway, she won't get in.”

I glare at him for Marilyn's sake. The parents laugh. There's a silence.

“Miss Cookson says she's got a very good chance, I heard her,” says Sheila. “They say at school that girls should be getting an education, a career and all that.”

“I'd just be happy if she was normal,” says the mum.

She looks like she's going to cry. Then goes out and gets the pudding. Apple pie. Looks like she made it herself. No packet or anything.

“Custard, Sheila?”

“Yes, Mrs Bolton, thank you.”

“Custard, Geoff?”

“Yes, a spoonful please, Jean.” The father pours extra sugar on his custard. I want to warn him about heart attacks. Think better of it.

The mum ladles bright yellow custard on another bowlful. She doesn't ask me if I want some. She pushes the bowl at me. Doesn't look at me.

Suppose I have to eat it. Sheila's pigging out as if calories never existed. And it does look very good.

I pick up the spoon.

Kyle sat down at the table in Marilyn's room and jabbed at one of the plastic boxes.

“Okay, let's go. Do you mind if I…?”

“Go ahead.”

The telly came on, although it didn't seem to be a telly.

“Wow,” Marilyn said, without thinking.

“No need to be sarcastic. Are you still having some kind of identity crisis?”

“No, go on.”

He flipped through lots of different pictures. His shoulders were hunched and tight. “Do you want to check your email?”

“No, it's okay, I'll do it tomorrow.” Marilyn was being more careful now, watching the screen change at a speed she could never have imagined. She'd never seen a boy type before. They didn't. Girls trained to be typists or secretaries. That's what her mum wanted her to do. Men wouldn't type.

But Kyle did, fast. Like he'd done it forever.

“What's that on your bed?”

Kyle hardly turned from the screen, but he pointed at the plastic bag on the bed. It had Holly's name on it, and she pulled it open. There was a box inside with a picture of something like the phone the mother had called a mobile.

“Go on, you sort it out,” said Kyle. “I'll start finding what you need.”

Marilyn had the phone in her hand and was looking through the box. She found what looked like a strange electric plug and was wondering what to do with it.

“1962, wasn't it? That's your time?”

She looked at him, stunned. She went over to the table. Standing behind Kyle she saw images she half recognised. The streets as she knew them. People wearing clothes she knew from the shops.

“Not much here, I'll keep looking.”

“No, that's my time. That really is my time,” Marilyn said. She couldn't keep the shock out of her voice. “That's where I belong. Only I've got here somehow. Not that I don't like it here. I really like it here. I want to stay.”

Kyle switched off the box and swung round to face her.

“Holly, are you okay?”

“I'm not Holly, I keep trying to tell you. I'm Marilyn.”

“Look, I've known you for a couple of years now. If you came from the sixties, believe me, I'd know.”

“No, you're right, I should get this sorted out.” Marilyn held out the plug and the phone.

“You're such a technophobe.” Kyle was distracted. He switched the phone on and it made a funny sound. “You can change your ring tone later. I'll put it on charge then at least you'll be able to use it.”

“Thanks.”

“Holly, you know what?”

“What?”

“You're my best mate and everything, but I don't get you. You know?” Marilyn didn't know, but she nodded.

“Sometimes I feel like I don't know you at all. I don't trust people easily. You know – since my mum and everything.”

Marilyn mumbled. This felt like very deep water and she didn't think she could swim.

“She'd be forty now. It's her birthday tomorrow.”

“Oh.” There was no way that Marilyn could keep up with this. She was obviously supposed to know something she didn't know. And Kyle wouldn't believe what she did know. Or he might get upset. But then he was a boy. He wouldn't get upset, or cry.

“I miss her – you know? Dad's cool and everything, but your mum's important. Like your mum – she's great.”

Marilyn thought of her own mum, working away in the kitchen. She never knew whether she'd be silent, or screaming at Marilyn for some completely unknown reason. She didn't know who her mum was. She'd never thought of that before. She swallowed.

Kyle was crying. She'd never seen a boy cry. She didn't think boys cried, ever. When her brother cried her mother said boys didn't cry and laughed at him. He soon stopped.

But Kyle was crying. Marilyn held out her arms to him. He let her hold him, his face buried in her shoulder, for a minute or two. She'd never held a boy like this. She'd never even touched a boy, except for her brother, when he was little.

“It's okay, I just need to let it out. Dad says he's had to learn to do that, since she died. We're always blubbing.”

Marilyn let go of him and he wiped his eyes and picked up the phone.

“Right, let's get this mobile working.”

Sheila and I escape from the table. In the end. She's better at making polite conversation than me. I'm beginning to like her. Good, considering she seems to be Marilyn's only friend. Great for my project. The real inside story on 1962. From real people living here. Sheila will be my first interviewee.

“So what's the most important thing in your life?”

She looks at me. “Is this one of those quizzes? Okay, boys, friends, music, clothes, my family.”

Nothing new there then. Is everyone the same? Would it be the same in 1952? 1942 even? 1842?

“What about you?”

“Hm. Same I suppose. Only my career's important to me. Really important. I want to succeed, don't you? Earn loads, go on amazing holidays, have a great house.”

I'm getting carried away.

“Just find a rich man. That's what Mam says.”

I'm shocked. “You can't just live off some guy.”

“You don't want children then?”

“Course I do. When I'm older. About thirty.”

“Thirty? That's very old. I'd like children in the next couple of years. Two, a boy and a girl.” She looks down at her hands. I notice how thin they are. “But that means I've got to find someone, a good husband, pretty soon.”

“You're only seventeen. Anyway, you don't have to have a man around to have children.”

“What do you mean?”

“Loads of people have kids on their own.”

Sheila's looking dead scared.

I realise I've been talking as if she knows who I am. As if we're in my world, not years ago. Totally bad move. Correct myself.

“No, of course, you're right. You need to find a man, right. Anyone in mind?”

“They're all so spotty and stupid.”