[Phoenix Court 03] - Could It Be Magic?

never say it, he felt responsible for her. He was her friend, and Andy’s boyfriend, he lived in her house, but he was also her sixth-form English teacher. On the way to Windermere he watched her and took note of a certain strain as she laughed and drank tequila. It was as if she felt pressed into having a good time. She was enjoying herself for the sake of her friends. The house-mates, Vince knew, spent a fair deal of time speculating more or less wildly about Penny’s mother. Neighbours gave them a few juicy titbits. They knew she had run off with a man. But there was also funny talk about her going off for a sex-change operation. Others said that she had already had it, that Penny’s mam had once been Penny’s dad. None of her house guests ever dared to ask Penny outright. The others suspected that Andy and Vince, as her closest friends, knew the full story, but they were loyal to her. Actually, Vince didn’t know the details, but he knew that Andy did. Andy and Penny had become very close in the last few months. The conversations they had shared, and their dual role looking after the house and all its comings and goings, seemed, although he didn’t want this, to drive a wedge between him and Andy.

Andy was settled here, now, with Penny and the others. Vince was a latecomer. He was out of place. He felt too prim for the cheerful mess and mucking in of the house on Phoenix Court. When he left his father’s house, up by the school, moving out in desperation, it had at first seemed the perfect answer. He and Andy were doing all right. But they all preyed on his nerves, sitting about doing nothing, playing easy-listening music as loud as it would go, eating cornflakes and leaving towels on the floor. For months he gritted his teeth and at least over the summer he had less to do. But Vince knew he couldn’t stay there for the winter term.

In August, when they sat on the pebbled shore at Bowness and threw chips for the grubby swans that came romping out of the shallows towards them, Vince was going through all this. He didn’t mean to break the news that day, spoiling the already jeopardised birthday, but Penny had a way of tuning into things, even things she would rather not hear, and broadcasting them.

“I wish we could have brought you somewhere nicer,” he told her. They were all sitting in a row on the damp wooden breakwater. Andy sat on the other side of Marsha, Sven and Alan. He was picking scabs of mildew off the wood. The others were laughing at a fat teenager struggling at the end of the jetty to get himself into his kayak. When he sat down, he looked wedged inside, and there was something sticking up at the opposite end of the boat, making him appear to have six-foot legs.

Penny told Vince that she’d always loved it here. She remembered her dad bringing her to stay at the youth hostel when she was a kid. He’d been disgusted because they made them do chores to pay for their keep. He thought he was on holiday. And he thought the people who were staying there with them looked unkempt.

That afternoon they walked some distance around the lake’s edge. They spent half an hour in a chintzy café, hidden between trees, where Andy upset a milk jug and laughed louder and longer than the others. “I’m a bundle of nerves today!” he told the waitress as she wordlessly mopped the oil cloth for him.

Later their party crossed a wide field and climbed a series of rotting fences and dry-stone walls to get to a private beach. Vince led them straight to the most secluded and gentlest spot by the edge of the lake and the others were content to squander the rest of the birthday afternoon there.

Trudging through the matted grass to the lakeside, Penny hooked up with Andy and asked him what the matter was. As usual he couldn’t put it into words. He felt like something awful was happening, he said, but he couldn’t be sure. Penny laughed and said that there was always something awful happening somewhere in the world, you could bank on it. Andy said, “No, I mean, to me. I feel like you do having a tooth taken out with a freezing injection.”

“Oh,” said Penny.

Vince was striding ahead, leading Sven and the others to the quiet shore, briskly in control and jollying them along, just like a teacher, she thought. He sounded hard and bright. It sounds like he’s made his mind up about something. She kept an eye on Andy and he looked exactly like someone who had been put in his place. But not a cross word has been said all day, she thought. It was typical of Andy and Vince to have a row without exchanging a single word.

The wind and rain abated, but it was still cool. While they played unselfconsciously on the shore, they kept their coats on. Vince smiled and hissed something to Penny about wishing it was warmer, wanting to see Sven strip off and splash about in the lake. He had carried out this flirtation with Sven for several months, but they all knew it was a joke. Ever since the day Vince had been interrupted in the bath by Sven letting himself in for a pee, nonchalantly carrying on a conversation with the mortified Vince. But, Vince had confided later, the Swede had the most beautiful penis he had ever seen. And no, he couldn’t say why. Andy had looked miffed at the time, but surely Vince’s attentions to the bluff, resolutely straight Sven couldn’t be narking him today? She knew there was more to this.

They stayed there until the last minute, when it started to pour and turn dark in earnest. Penny was content to