“Oh, no,” said Les. “My mum’s back. I’ll ring you again if I can.”
After that call, I talked to Les in my head all the time. I stayed in my room, listening out for the phone, writing him letters and notes that I planned to send when he rang back with the address.
But he never rang back. His mother must’ve been watching him like a hawk.
Either that or he’d died.
Les didn’t die, but he also didn’t come back to London for three weeks. The longest three weeks of my life. I’d forgotten how boring and empty my life had been without him, but it all came back pretty quickly. Some days I felt like he’d never existed. The dumb, dull days stretched into dumb, dull nights. I ate, I slept, I watched TV. I was like a hamster going round and round in its wheel. The same things to do, the same arguments, the same big nothing.
Even the Spiggs noticed how depressed I was.
“It’s not like you to look like that in the holidays,” she said over supper one night.
“Like what?” I asked, thinking of words like “tragic” and “heartbroken” and “stricken with grief”.
“Like you’ve got a life sentence with hard labour,” said my mother.
I gave her a meaningful look. “I have.”
Les got back on a Friday. He rang me as soon as he walked through his front door.
Hilary and Charley still hadn’t made up. She was only a few feet away in the kitchen, descaling the kettle, her ears up like a hunting dog’s.
I turned my back on her.
“Oh, Amie,” I said, in a bright, casual voice. “What’s up?”
“Amie?” said Les. “Lana, it’s me. Les. I just got back.”
“Oh, you poor thing…” I said. “Are you feeling better now?”
“Oh, I get it,” said Les. “You can’t talk. Yeah, I’m still weak, but I’m much better.” He lowered his voice. “I’ve been thinking about you.”
Fudge sauce flowed through my veins.
“Me, too,” I said. “A lot…” I smiled into the receiver. “Maybe we can go to a film or something. Now that you’re better.”
“Not tonight,” my mother shouted. “You’re going shopping with me. Remember?”
How could I forget something as exciting as that?
“I’ll have to see what’s happening,” said Les. “I’ve been off work a while.”
It was times like these that convinced me that once I’d had my family, I was going to have a great career as an actress. There wasn’t a shred of disappointment in my voice as I said, “Oh, of course. I know you’ve got a lot to catch up on.”
“And I missed all the holiday parties,” said Les. “I’ve got some people to see.”
I almost said, “And what am I? Sliced bread?” but I didn’t have to. Les, as per usual, knew how I felt.
“Tell you what,” said Les. “Why don’t you come round to the shop tomorrow? I’m on nights.”
“All right,” I said. “I’ll see you then.”
“And wear those boxer shorts you wore that time,” said Les. He laughed. “Just so I know.”
I smiled, drowning in fudge sauce. He really had been thinking of me.
The winter slogged on, dull and grey. My life was pretty dull and grey, too. Hilary was usually at home in the evenings and Les was usually working. Because Shanee lived with her mother, her two little brothers, her one little sister (who shared a room with her), two cats, a dog and an assortment of other small mammals – and had less privacy than a traffic light – she’d come to mine more than I’d gone to hers since we started secondary school, but now that changed.
With the ointment of my love clogged with dead flies, I had nowhere else to go. I wasn’t seeing much of Les because he was so busy and Hilary had cemented herself to the couch. The Tylers’ was like a madhouse with all the keepers on their tea break, but it was better than solitary confinement with a prison guard who never stopped nagging you about your homework and how much make-up you were wearing and where you were going and when you were coming back and who you were going to see.
“God…” I shouted over the noise from the television, Shanee’s brothers and the radio that was blaring from her bedroom. “I really miss it sometimes, you know?”
I looked over. Shanee had her eyes on the film we were watching. Her brothers were sitting on the floor in front of us, impersonating an air strike and throwing crayons at each other.
“You really should try it,” I went on. “It’s so
Shanee nodded. “I know,” she said, still watching Robert De Niro and Sharon Stone snogging passionately. “I intend to try it. Eventually.”
I hugged myself. “Sex…” I sighed longingly. “There’s nothing like it.”
To tell the truth, I kind of enjoyed talking about sex with Les more than I’d actually enjoyed doing it. I mean, it was all right – it was great – but it wasn’t the big deal everyone made out. The kissing and stroking was nice, but it didn’t last that long, and the deed itself was over almost as soon as it began. I’d nicked a couple of sex manuals from the library, so I knew that these things can take time. Practice makes perfect. If you have anywhere to practise – which we didn’t.
Shanee clicked the remote control and got to her feet.
“I’m going to get something to drink,” she announced. “Anybody else want anything?”
They
I followed Shanee into the kitchen, still discussing sex, the way women do.
In many ways, she was the perfect audience, since she had no personal experience whatsoever and I could tell her anything I liked without worrying that she’d know better. The closest Shanee’d ever got to a boy was when one bumped into her on the street.
Shanee opened the fridge and looked inside.
“So, when are you seeing Les again?” she asked, cutting me off in mid-sentence.
“I saw him yesterday.” I took five glasses from the draining-board. I’d seen Les at work again, but it was a busy night and I didn’t stay long. “But not, you know,
“So I gathered.”
The disadvantage of Shanee as an audience was that, having no personal experience, her interest wore off pretty fast.
“It’d be a lot better if you had a boyfriend, too,” I complained. “Then you’d want to talk about sex. This is like trying to describe Miami to someone who’s never left the Hebrides.”
Shanee re-emerged from the fridge with two cartons of juice. “Miami and Disney World aren’t the same thing,” she informed me.
I stared back at her. I had no idea what she meant.
Shanee sighed. “So how long has it been?” she asked.
We’d only ever really done it once but Shanee didn’t need to know that. We had tried a few times but something always seemed to go wrong. The first time was when the Wicked Witch went to Hastings to see my nan. But we were so excited to have the flat to ourselves that we finished off her Christmas port
“A week,” I lied. “A whole, excruciating week.”
Shanee nodded towards the cupboard over the sink. “There’s crisps and biscuits up in there,” she