On the morning of Nathan’s final exam Gwen washed and straightened her hair. He had not been home for more than two weeks and the last time they had seen one another had been just after she’d returned from the hospital when she had been curled on the sofa, barely responsive. She had been startled and touched by his devastation then, and it had shown her the right way to respond. Like a good army wife she had used her little strength to soothe him and patch him up and send him back into battle. When they’d spoken since she’d done her best to sound cheerful, and to listen when he talked about school. It became easier and easier to sound okay, for she had begun to feel okay, but there was still a conversation missing; she had comforted him, but missed her own comforting. She wanted back the concern he’d shown that first night. She wanted praise for her bravery, and coddling for her trauma. And she wanted to remind him as much as possible of her old self. His last day at Westminster was a milestone; she had needed him, and now she could tell him so and they could be together. They could reassemble their bedroom (surely now the parents would allow it) and they would feel close again, and united. He would begin to fathom the leaden weight of all she felt, the dull guilt and the piercing flashes of disbelief. Nathan’s love and admiration for her courage would lift the last sorrow from her shoulders like a cloak; he would be gallant, attentive, and she would shrug loose, would emerge poised and damaged, wiser and more beautiful, and walk free into the candlelight and music of the rest of her life. She could start to forget all she had learned about loneliness. In the darkness their fingertips would touch, and it would not be despair but safety and connection.
• • •
IN ST. JAMES’S PARK the grass had just been cut, and the warm air was filled with drowsy summer. Passing crowds of tourists stayed dutifully to the paths, studying their maps and phones and invariably in search of either the Mall and onward to Buckingham Palace, or Birdcage Walk and the Houses of Parliament. The Westminster boys lay on the freshly clipped lawns, blithe and privileged in charcoal suits and new freedom, playing a lazy, seated game of catch with a tight-crumpled ball of white paper that had once been an A-level exam sheet.
From his inside pocket Charlie drew a bottle of vodka and a packet of cigarettes while from the same hiding place in his own wrinkled jacket Nathan produced his hip flask. The sight of it made Gwen smile to herself.
A dark-haired boy loped over to join them and dropped his rucksack in the middle of the circle. This was Edmund, who sat next to Nathan in Pure Maths. Edmund had long ago dated Valentina, briefly, which made him an object of interest. She studied his face for signs that he’d been branded in some manner by the Demon Barber.
“Champers?”
“Have you got? You star!”
“Gift from the olds. I’ve even got glasses.” Edmund unzipped his rucksack and began to flick plastic cups into their laps.
“Mixers?” asked Charlie.
“It’s champagne, you muppet.”
“For the vodka.”
“Nope. Mixers are for pussies.”
“I’ll go to the newsagent,” Gwen offered, seeing a way to participate whilst also getting away from his friends, for a moment. She stood up, squinting in the sunshine. Her sunglasses were in her bag but she now worried they were babyish; when she bought them she’d thought the heart-shaped lenses quirky and original, here she felt uncertain.
“Top girl. Orange juice, cranberry juice, soda.”
Gwen looked at Nathan, waiting.
“What?”
“Wallet?”
“No cash? Here.” He handed her a twenty-pound note. “Buy yourself something pretty.” His voice was hard and public, straining for cool and distance. He couldn’t help it. Later he would coo and nuzzle her, overcompensating, anxious for reassurance that she would not hold him to the distance he himself had made.
The shops were farther than she’d remembered. She decided to spend the rest of Nathan’s money on food, something that his friends would not have considered, and so bought cheese-and-onion crisps, Jaffa Cakes, and three large bags of Wine Gums. The drinks were heavy, and the thin plastic bags were splitting by the time she was halfway back across the field. She managed to fit one bottle into her own bag, but the others had to be tucked awkwardly into the crook of each arm, and her return progress was cumbrous and slightly sweaty in the rising heat of the afternoon. Every few yards she had to stop and readjust her burdens.
There were ten or twelve teenagers cross-legged in a circle by the time she returned, mostly boys, as well as two girls she didn’t recognize, one of whom had her stockinged feet in, or near to, Charlie’s crotch. The champagne and vodka bottles were empty, and a large Malibu was circulating.
“You can’t mix Malibu and cranberry juice!” snorted Nathan, when he saw her. “What were you thinking, woman?”
“It was vodka when I left.”
“Water into wine. Vodka into Malibu. Transubstantiation.” He widened his eyes. “It’s a miracle.”
“Transubstantiation’s not water into wine, Fuller.” Beside him Edmund began to guffaw with tipsy laughter. “Such a fucking Jew.”
Shocked, Gwen dropped the bottles rather heavily in the center of the circle, but Nathan had only punched his friend rather lazily in the bicep and grinned. “Well, what is it, then? It’d be fucking impressive. Imagine turning Evian into Cab Sauv.”
“S’when the communion wafer becomes the Body of Christ.” Edmund tossed his heavy hair from his eyes and tore into one of Gwen’s bags of kettle chips, without acknowledgment. “You take the host.” He laid a large crisp on his own extended tongue in illustration.
Nathan hooked his arm around Gwen’s neck and pulled her closer, his exhalations loud and heavy against her ear. She was pleased by this display of possession and desire, and somewhat less pleased by the smell of his breath and the slightly glazed look in his eyes. He had grown sloppy, and his laughter came in loud, forced shouts. The group was raucous with freedom but Nathan seemed further gone than the others, his head lolling, occasionally pulling her to him and plunging a rather clumsy tongue slightly too deep into her mouth.
The afternoon settled. The boys played a brief game of football but soon gave up in the heat, balled their obsolete school jackets, and stretched back in the grass. Gwen lay down dutifully beside Nathan, who rolled over and began to kiss her, messily and ostentatiously, until Charlie threw a Wine Gum at them and to Gwen’s relief he stopped. She sat up again. By now she’d hoped to be alone with Nathan, perhaps somewhere in this park, walking, talking, holding hands, shaking their heads in awe at the extraordinary bond they shared.
Today marked a momentous transition, and counting down toward it had steadied her in some of her darkest moments. She had pictured that first moment in which the huge oak doors creaked open. She’d imagined Nathan swinging her around with joy at his liberation, not only from school but from all the academic constraints that had hampered his ability to take care of her. Today, Nathan would assume the mantle of his responsibilities, solemn as a graduation gown. She would see him come back to her, and see her once again. It had already begun when, on the walk here he had hung back from the others, had pulled her for a moment down a quiet stable mews, cobbled, blue plaqued, and she had recognized in him the old fresh urgency, undiminished. Though she now found even the idea of sexual contact repellent, almost intolerable, her heart had leapt. Teenagers have always been forced to take these quiet public corners and make them private, temporarily, and here, with Nathan’s heavy breath and roaming hands, was proof that they were once again normal teenagers. The daylight and his waiting friends ensured she was safe to sigh, and pull him tighter, and imitate his frustration. She found herself rising above the scene. She saw her red head bent close toward his dark one. They could have been parents, bound together inextricably, and eternally. Can you believe it? Those two down there, kissing—forever united. Look at them!
• • •
AT HALF PAST FOUR the group began to stir. There was a general agreement that they should go back to Yard and meet those who had been in afternoon exams and then move the celebrations to a pub behind Victoria Street, or perhaps to Marina’s house, in Vincent Square. Gwen tugged on Nathan’s sleeve and whispered, “Now we can go to Covent Garden.” It was already much later than she’d hoped. They would have to rush if they were to make it to the Taiwanese bubble tea place, before heading home in time for James’s barbecue.
“Come and meet Dom and the others from Geography, ma petite.”
She shook her head. “We’re meant to do something just the two of us.”
“I tell you what.” Nathan stepped back unsteadily and slung an arm around Charlie’s shoulders. “This is what’s going to happen. You go and do what you need to do in Covent Garden. She needs to go shopping,” he whispered to Charlie, confidentially, “and then you come back and meet us in the pub. We’ll be in the pub, and you can come back and meet us.”
“Or at Marina’s,” added one of the girls, unexpectedly. She was a few feet away; though they had seemed busy gathering their belongings, collecting crisp packets, brushing grass from their clothing, everyone was in earshot.
Gwen shook her head again. “I’m going.” Her voice came out louder than she’d intended. “I’m not coming back again. I’m going home.”
“Okay, baby, have fun. I’ll be home in . . . soon. I’ve just got very business— I’ve got very important business to attend to, which is the business of celebrating.”
She set off across the lawn and he loped a few steps to catch up with her.
“Are you pissed, baby?” he asked, in a different, private voice. She didn’t care. Respect concealed from his friends had no value. Shouldn’t he want to be alone with her?
“No,” she snapped, “you’re pissed.”
“Both can be true, in very different ways,” he said, sorrowfully, “the American way and the British. I prefer the English way, in this case. I’m pissed in the British sense; you’re absolutely right and I highly, highly, highly, highly recommend it. Don’t be pissed with me.”
“You said we’d talk after the exams. You said we’d hang out, and we’d talk about everything—”
“Fuck, seriously?” He bent down and began bundling his jacket into his school bag. “Not now. I am not thinking about that today. It’s literally the last thing I want to think about, I’ve just finished my exams. S’the end of my exams. S’s my big day.”
“I spent the last day of my exams in hospital. And P.S., it’s all I think about. All the time. It’s not like, a choice, I can’t just decide, ‘Oh, I don’t want to think about this today.’”
“Well then you should get over it,” he said shortly, standing up again.
She stared at him and he nodded vigorously, in agreement with himself.
“Seriously. Get over it! Come get drunk, come toast the end of my exams. You missed it for yourself because of the thing, so come toast the end of your exams, too! We should be celebrating the fact that you can drink; drinking’s awesome. Not drinking is just . . . a waste. Come toast the fact that we had a fucking lucky escape, we got like a, a get-out-of-jail-free card, baby; we should be toasting. Cheers!” He raised an invisible glass to her, squinting slightly.
Perhaps he sensed that he had gone too far here as he then lurched forward and tried to kiss her with sloppy tenderness, but Gwen jerked herself free and began to run across the lawn, lowering her head and succumbing, finally, to her sobs. When she reached the path she turned to see that Nathan had lit a cigarette, and with this dangling from his lower lip was bouncing a football from knee to knee with a maddening, surprising coordination. She did not wait, in case he didn’t look up. A lucky escape. She hated him, and herself.