She said, “You’re going to go, aren’t you?”
He looked across. “I applied for a job down south. And I got it.”
“South.” She whistled. “Does our school know?” Her heart was doing twenty to the dozen. She had provoked him into honesty and now she couldn’t believe they were discussing this so blandly. She had asked him wishing only to be proved wrong.
“I won’t go leaving anybody high and dry.” He had gone cold again, staring at the lake. Motorboats were slashing past in the near distance. You could see people sat on the back, holding wine glasses carefully and staring at Penny’s birthday party on private land.
“But you’re cutting your links with Aycliffe.”
“I think I have to, Penny.”
“I’ve known you would sooner or later.”
“I’ve loved living at number sixteen.” He smiled. “If anything’s kept me and Andy going past our sell-by date, it’s having time together in the home you’ve made for us.”
She shrugged. “Hey.”
“No, it’s true, pet. You brought us all together. Look at the rest of them.” He nodded towards Sven and the others. Sven had his faded jeans rolled up to his knees, making a show of plodging out in water that would be freezing. “They all love you. You have a gift for connecting people.”
“That’s from you, teaching me E. M. Forster.”
He smirked. “Right.”
“I wish you’d stay, Vince.”
“I know. And I’m leaving you in the lurch, mopping up after me. Andy won’t be much fun for a while after I’m gone.”
“He’s not going to be happy,” she said lightly as they both looked at Andy. He was self-absorbedly slinging stones into the brown water, trying and failing to make them skim. For that day he was dressed like someone out of Blur, or, as Vince pointed out, himself at the age of nine.
Vince was saying, “I’m not flattering myself. I don’t think Andy will be devastated to finish with me. But he’s not going to be ecstatic, either.”
It seemed to Penny that she’d had almost a year of them charting their separate graphs of each other. They never had tallied and both had – if she were honest – worn her out. The treacherous part of herself gave a pang of relief at Vince’s news.
“You never saw a future for the two of you, did you?” she asked.
“We met when we were seventeen. We thought we were the only two puffs in the northeast. So of course we mean a lot to each other now.” He gave a laugh that was almost mocking. “Now that we’re so sophisticated. Nah, we still mean a lot. But I don’t know what he wants any more.”
Penny looked down. “I’ve known him less than a year and he’s changed so much in that time. He’s become more — I don’t know.”
“He’s opened out,” Vince said. “I suppose he’s more amenable to people. I’m glad the two of you have become friends.”
She looked at him, thinking he was being sarcastic. But he wasn’t. He felt that he was passing Andy on to someone. It was a relief Andy had someone there. Vince remembered being surprised at how solid a team Andy and Penny had become. He first saw it when he himself moved in, back in March. One Thursday night, hauling a few bags and boxes of essentials, Vince had at last left his dad’s place. He found the squat’s inhabitants eating bowls of cereal in the living room, watching EastEnders in a smog of Benny Hedges. The household had just opened up to let him in and, even though it was to Andy’s single bed in the narrowest room that Vince automatically went that night, he was treated by Andy and Penny as just another nonpaying guest. On some unspoken level they realised that Vince was, in his own blind way, passing through. Andy had seemed equivocal, almost diffident about his presence.
How to tell Vince that? Penny wondered. Vince who thought Andy clung to him and needed passing on from carer to carer. Vince who, thin-lipped and anxious, now seemed on the verge of changing his mind about moving on, suddenly fearful of upsetting Andy. Penny thought Andy was looking gorgeous that afternoon. His uncertainty and nerves brought up to the surface everything that was most endearing in him. When anyone talked to him he flinched and smiled shyly, struggling to join in with them.
Vince resolutely said, “No. I do have to go south.”
She laughed when he came downstairs at last, dressed up for the party, because he was in a cowboy outfit. The least excuse and there he’d be dressed up as something. It was funny tonight, with him standing there in leather chaps and a red and black plaid shirt, because her song for the afternoon had been ‘Rhinestone Cowboy’. She had played it again and again as she cooked and prepared.
Standing in the kitchen doorway, Andy adjusted his red bandanna, mystified by her laughter. He was often perplexed by what Penny and her friends laughed at. He assumed they must have college jokes, or jokes that went above his head.
Penny ran the tape back once more to play him the song. When it started, he realised the joke and relaxed.
She snorted. “You were meant to be down here, helping with
