In the square, Edie shivers and stands up, squashing with her foot the cigarette she’d been smoking. ‘Where’re you off to?’ she asks, and when I tell her I’m heading home she smiles and says, ‘I’ll walk with you.’ And just like that it’s as though the man, whoever he was and whatever went on between them, is forgotten.
‘Great,’ I say, ‘fantastic!’
She bends to pick up her bag, and as she does her skirt rides up to show her knickers. I quickly look away. ‘GCSE results will be in pretty soon,’ I say hurriedly, as we begin to walk. Her bare arm brushes mine, the fine hairs on both mingling briefly together.
‘Yeah? How do you think you did?’
I shrug. ‘OK, I guess. I was predicted ten As, so …’
She turns to me, wide-eyed. ‘Ten As? Ten As?’ She whistles. ‘Wow, brainbox, huh?’
I glance at her, trying to work out if she’s saying this in the same way Sheridan Alsop would, as though there’s something mystifyingly pathetic about me doing well at school, but then I see her admiring smile and my tummy dips with happiness.
‘God, I wish I was clever,’ she says a few moments later. ‘I did my GCSEs last year. Total disaster! Got to retake some of them while I do my A-levels.’ I notice again how nice her voice is. Loud and clear and confident, her words spilling out quickly in her Manchester accent. She’s delving into her bag and eventually pulls out another cigarette. She lights it, and offers one to me. ‘No?’ she says, when I shake my head. ‘Very wise. Wish I’d never started.’ She laughs, a lovely, warm throaty sound, and says, ‘See? Not very bright, am I?’ She walks as though she’s on springs, her long legs striding, her chin held high. I trudge next to her, feeling too hot, my thighs rubbing together.
Hesitantly I say, ‘I could … I mean, I could help you, if you want. With your GCSEs – your coursework and stuff.’
She looks at me in surprise. ‘For real? That would be amazing!’ She bumps her shoulder against mine. ‘Seriously, that’s really nice of you.’
I bite my lip, trying to contain the smile that’s threatening to split my face in two.
We walk in silence for a while but as we leave the square she tells me why she moved to Fremton. ‘It’s my nan’s old place, but she died last year. My mum had a car accident and she can’t work any more, so we moved down here to save on rent while she gets better.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry about your mum,’ I say.
‘Don’t be,’ she replies breezily. ‘She’ll be fine. She doesn’t care about me anyway, and neither does my dad – not that I’ve seen him for years.’
I’m shocked by her words, how casually she says them – I could never imagine speaking about my own parents like that.
‘You’re easy to talk to, you know,’ she says suddenly.
‘Am I?’
‘Yeah. Haven’t you noticed how most people when you’re talking to them are just waiting till it’s their turn to speak? You actually listen. It’s nice.’ Her face darkens and she adds, ‘Not that I’ve had anyone to talk to since Mum dragged me away from all my friends – and she certainly doesn’t give a shit, that’s for sure.’
I don’t know what to say to this, and we walk in silence until we turn the corner into Heartfields, where I live, and she brightens again. ‘How about you, anyway? You lived here long?’
So I tell her about our old village in Wales, and how we moved down here, and though I don’t mention Lydia or the way my parents barely speak to each other any more, I somehow find enough to say that we’re almost at my house before I realize I haven’t stopped talking once. ‘Sorry,’ I say, putting my hand to my mouth. ‘I’m going on and on, aren’t I?’
She shrugs. ‘So?’
‘Mum says you should only speak if you can improve upon the silence.’
‘Yeah?’ she raises her eyebrows, ‘Your mum sounds like a right laugh.’
‘No,’ I say, surprised. ‘No, she’s really not.’
She smiles at that, but I’m not sure why.
‘Come on,’ she puts her arm through mine, ‘this your street, is it?’
I hadn’t expected Edie to actually want to come home with me, but she follows me up our front path and waits expectantly as I dig around for my keys. ‘Wow,’ she says. ‘Nice house.’ And as I look at her I see Edie through my mother’s eyes: the make-up and short skirt, the cigarette that she’s only now dropping to the ground. Sure enough, as soon as I open the door, Mum appears, stopping in her tracks in the hallway as she looks past me to Edie.
‘Mum,’ I say nervously, ‘this is—’ but Edie walks in front of me, giving Mum a big smile. ‘Hiya, I’m Edie. I’m going to be starting at Heather’s school. Wow,’ she adds, gazing around herself, ‘look at all those clocks, bet you’re never late, are you?’
‘Um, no,’ my mother replies faintly as I grab hold of Edie’s arm.
‘Come on,’ I say, ‘let’s go to my room,’ and together we run up the stairs, laughter bubbling in my chest, leaving my mum standing by herself in the hall, staring after us.
When I close my bedroom door I look at Edie standing by my bed and feel suddenly shy. ‘I love your skirt,’ I tell her at last. ‘And your hair.’ I look down at my own clothes bought for me by Mum. ‘I wish I looked like you.’
‘Don’t be daft,’ she says, wandering over to my dressing table and picking up a tube of spot cream. ‘You should see me without my make-up.’
‘I don’t wear any,’ I admit. ‘I don’t know how to do it.’
‘I can show you if you want.’ She rummages in her bag and pulls out some mascara and lipstick. ‘This is all I’ve got though. How about you?’
I hesitate, not sure whether to show her at first, but then I figure of all the things I could share with her, all the secrets I could reveal about myself, this one’s probably not the worst. I go and lift a shoebox down from the top of my wardrobe and pull off the lid. We both stare down at its contents: a mass of unopened lipsticks, mascaras, foundations and eye shadows. I have everything, in every shade.
Edie whistles. ‘Wow. Where’d you get the money for all that?’
‘I suppose I … well, actually … I stole them.’ Even as I say the words the feeling I get when I do it comes back to me; the awful, almost sickening fear of how terrible the consequences would be if I were caught somehow only making it more addictive. I never wear any of it though – it’s like I have no desire for it once I’ve slipped it up my sleeve in Boots.
She’s still staring at me open-mouthed. ‘What, shoplifted?’ She says it so loudly and sounds so scandalized that I glance at my closed door in alarm.
‘Shussh!’ I hiss urgently. Our eyes meet and though I have no idea why, we both burst out laughing. And pretty soon we can’t seem to stop. The laughter gathers and swells until neither of us can speak, and finally I have to sit on the bed and hold my stomach, barely able to breathe. I have never laughed like this with anyone before. I don’t even know exactly what’s so funny. Edie flops down next to me and I look at her and I think, I love you.
‘Come on,’ she says, and taking my hand pulls me up off the bed and sits me in front of my dressing-table mirror. She starts with my hair, picking up my brush and running it gently through my thick yellow frizz. I close my eyes. The touch of her hands on me, the slow, patient stroke of the brush, it’s all so wonderful, so lovely. I can smell the cigarette smoke on her fingers, a scent of apples when she moves. A hush falls, there’s only the ticking of the clocks beyond my closed door and the sound of the bristles against my scalp.
And then, into the silence, she says, ‘Did you see that lad I was talking to, in the square?’
I open my eyes. The brush stops. When I look up at her reflection I find her watching me, waiting for a response. ‘Yes,’ I admit.
‘Had you ever seen him before?’
I shake my head.
‘Me neither. He said his name was Connor.’ And by the way she says it, I somehow know that she has longed to say the name out loud, loves the shape and sound of it on her tongue.
There’s a silence. ‘He seemed to like you,’ I offer at last, understanding that it’s what she wants, and instantly her face lights up.
‘You think?’ A strange half-smile plays around her lips as she turns back to her reflection in the mirror, and I can tell that she’s no longer here with me, that it’s him in the room with her now, not me.
Even before we reach the top of the hill we hear it: the screams and music and the dull roar of generators, loudspeaker voices and a klaxon’s wail. And then, there we are, Edie and I, looking down at it all spread out below us, the coloured lights and the big wheel and the people and the caravans and the stalls. A magical, other world transported into the middle of Braxton fields.
Edie nudges me in the ribs and I look down to see a bottle of vodka in her hand. I shake my head but when she grins and thrusts it at me again, something makes me hesitate. Real life recedes and in its place I see spread out below me in the lights and music and laughter a million shimmering possibilities. On impulse I take the bottle from her and swig it back, the liquid choking and burning my throat, making me splutter while Edie laughs. ‘Come on,’ she says, grabbing my hand, and we run down the hill together, to where the fair waits for us, the vodka trailing excitement through me like a firework.
I can’t believe I’m here, that my parents have let me come. I’d walked in on one of their arguments earlier, too excited by Edie’s phone call to notice the sound of voices hissing from beneath the closed kitchen door like a gas leak. I think Dad had let me go to make Mum cross. ‘For pity’s sake, Jennifer, she’s sixteen,’ he’d said, and I ran to get my coat, not daring to catch Mum’s eye, my head already full of Edie and of what we’d do tonight.
And now here we are in the midst of it all: little kids with fluorescent rings around their necks, candy floss and giant cuddly toys and goldfish in bags, groups of lads with cans of beer and girls shrieking on the Hearts and Diamonds. A loudspeaker booms a thudding bass as we stand by a ride called Moon Rocket that sends a cage of screaming people soaring into the air. It’s amazing, the colours and noise and lights, but when I turn to Edie I suddenly realize that she’s scanning the crowds as if searching for something. ‘Are you all right?’ I ask her.
She shrugs. ‘Yeah, sure. What shall we go on? Have you got any money?’ Excitedly I pull out the handful of notes I’d grabbed from my savings box before coming tonight and her eyes widen. ‘Christ, Heather,’ she laughs. ‘You been robbing banks now too?’
We go on everything, running from ride to ride. I don’t mind paying for everything at all. I drink more vodka and I laugh and scream as if, were I to stop for a moment, the night might end, the fair and all its possibilities might vanish. But when I notice again Edie’s distracted expression I understand with a stab of disappointment that it’s him she’s looking for, the lad from the square – it’s him who she came for tonight. And soon I’m searching him out too, in the gaps between the rides where the fair’s bright lights don’t quite reach, faces lingering in the shadows, mouths sucking on cigarettes and sipping from cans. Strangers’ eyes flickering back at us, but he’s not there.
The last ride we go on is the waltzers and we spin round and round, the speed and the motion causing Edie to slide along the plastic seat towards me. I feel her softness and her hard angles as she lands against me, catch the scent of her hair. We’re dizzy when we get off, giddy and disorientated and laughing, but I look up and there he is. Standing with some other lads a few metres away, down by the side of the dodgems, huddled over something that they’re passing between them. It’s him. He’s half-turned away from us but it’s definitely Connor, and suddenly he looks up, his face flashing red, yellow, purple, green, his eyes scanning the crowds before landing on Edie, dark and steady as the barrels of a gun.
I try to steer her away but I’m too late. Her eyes are locked on his and it’s as if he’s a magician, a hypnotist, the way she goes to him, as though sleepwalking, as though the rest of the world and all its light and music has vanished. I trail after her and just before she reaches him I pull on her arm. ‘What?’ she asks, without looking away from him, without dropping his eyes, even for a second.
‘It’s late. I better go home.’
‘OK,’ she says, already moving off again. ‘I’ll see you later, yeah?’
‘Aren’t you coming?’
‘No.’ She shrugs off my hand and I feel a sharp slap of rejection. ‘Go home,’ she says. ‘I’m staying here.’ And she moves away, to where he’s waiting for her. For a moment I watch her go before I turn back through the crowds alone.