Tilly was overwrought and not even sure why. Alice would know. Alice loved laying her finger on such agonies. There was Raff, there was the death of the chickens, and then there was Martha being mean and Ben being smug.
It made Tilly feel wilfully disobedient. She went to Alice’s house without a word to Martha. Mr Layton had not returned home. It was a relief to have missed him. She liked him, and it was exhausting to try to be liked back. If he was there, she would have to transform into the sort of girl he would approve of, and who knew what that was? Well turned out? Full of manners, standing up straight? Or the exact opposite: poetic and bewildered, a revolutionary. She could so easily disappoint him. But so far he seemed to like her without her even having tried. And now she couldn’t be natural. She couldn’t tell Alice. What would Alice think if she knew Tilly wanted Mr Layton to love her like he loved Alice? Everyone knows this wouldn’t ever happen and that fathers didn’t love other people’s daughters, but that record had let a little hope spring that he would secretly barrack for her in life.
What worried her even more was the affair. She hadn’t told Alice. It was too frightening to think of what could happen. If Alice knew, would she resent Tilly by association? Everything about Tilly—her home, her family, her lack of ambition—it all buckled into crumbling disorder when seen next to the good Layton family, and the sordidness of this affair would just heap more weight onto the rubble. If Mr Layton found out, would he see the infidelity committed by Tilly’s father as a contagion that infected her too?
Tilly suggested Alice and she go for a walk. They didn’t go far, just down the side of the hill towards the valley where a dry creek bed twisted through a huddle of poplars. They sat in the shade, slapping at the mosquitoes on their ankles.
Tilly lit a cigarette. ‘A fox got all our chickens. It killed them all. Poor Ada discovered them.’
‘Poor chickens,’ said Alice.
‘Yes, poor little ladies,’ said Tilly. ‘And I nearly cried when your dad gave me that record.’
‘Yeah. I saw that.’ Alice picked at a scab on her knuckle. ‘You’re such a baby.’
That awful, telling rush of emotion had overtaken her before she could syphon it out some other way. It had showed her love not for Mr Layton but for Mr Layton’s kindness, or his attention to her, which fell into the depths and landed on a tender spot.
‘I was just embarrassed. I’m not used to presents.’
‘What about on your birthday? Christmas?’ Alice was incredulous.
‘Mum’s in charge of presents. I told you she always forgets my birthday. Remember when I was nine? I was so upset that no one remembered, I ran away and built a cubby and ate a whole box of shortbread creams that I pinched from the cupboard. When I finally went home she had gone to the chemist and bought me a hairbrush.’ Tilly whistled with false enthusiasm.
‘And some lip balm,’ Tilly conceded
‘Lip balm?’ Alice snorted, ‘What’s wrong with your lips?’
‘Nothing.’
Alice put her hand though her hair and stretched. ‘That reminds me. My mum took me bra shopping,’ she said, popping her chest out. ‘We got one you’ll love. It’s got lace on it.’
Tilly bit back her envy, which was not about the bra but that Alice’s mum took her shopping. ‘Anyway, the record your dad gave me, it was pretty cool actually,’ she said. ‘And it did make me want to learn piano. I’ve just been to Raff’s house and asked his mum about piano lessons.’
‘Oh, so that’s why the dress.’
‘What do you mean?’ Why did Alice only just mention the dress now? Had she been too uncomfortable about it to bring it up earlier?
‘I mean that’s why you wore something special.’
‘Special? I got it at the op shop.’
‘Well, that was a good score. It’s nice. You look good in it.’ Alice smiled to show her sincerity.
‘Anyway’—now that it had come, Tilly swiped the compliment away—‘I met Daisy. She’s really interesting and she’s going to teach me piano. I’m excited. I mean, I’m sure I won’t be any good, but I’m excited anyway. Can you tell your dad, and say thank you to him for me?’
‘You will be good,’ Alice said, irritated. ‘You always say you’re bad at things, but you’re not.’
But Tilly wasn’t being falsely modest. She hung her head on her knees. This wasn’t how she’d intended the conversation to go. ‘I don’t mean to do that,’ she said.
‘Well you do. You act like no one would like you too, but all the boys like you—it’s you who doesn’t like them. They all think you think you’re too good for them.’ Alice was on a roll now.
‘Who thinks that?’ said Tilly, aghast.
‘Well, Blake Armstead, for one. He’s nice. He’s good looking… Any other girl would be rapt if he asked her out. But he asks you out and you say no. Remember? And also Ted O’Brien. And Harvey what’s-his-name, the brainy one who lives near the station. And Harry—remember, he wrote you love letters and you didn’t even write back.’
‘I did write back, that’s not true. I just didn’t encourage him. You wouldn’t have either.’
‘But I have a boyfriend. You don’t. You say you want one, but you never say yes.’
Tilly tugged at the grass. She stared out at the creek bed, where the copse of thin, speckled trunks was like pale, straining necks, strangled by the dark shade they cast. It wasn’t that she thought herself too good; Alice knew that. It was more that she just didn’t seem to like anyone who liked her.
‘I get an icky feeling. I told you that.’ It was a feeling that hovered somewhere between discomfort and repulsion and it came on when, for instance, Blake Armstead had tried to kiss her at the bus stop. Alice giggled and then shook her head. ‘You’ll grow out of that one day. I did.’ She blushed.
Tilly took the cue. ‘So, how are things with Simon?’
‘Oh, my god. Amazing. Really, I’m like a lovebird.’ Alice launched into a description of her evenings with Simon: what music he played, how he had bought her a ticket to see the Pretenders, what things he said about her, how much further he wanted her to go. Should she? What did Tilly think?
‘I guess if you feel like it and you trust him.’
‘I do feel like it.’ Alice’s voice was hushed, her face alight with mystery. She twirled a lock of hair.
This was terrifying. The time for sex had been approaching and now it was here, and Tilly was still stuck way back in the icky feelings. She had to catch up.
‘There is someone I like,’ she said.
Alice looked doubtful. ‘Really? Who?’
‘Don’t laugh,’ Tilly said. ‘Raff Cavallo.’ She squeezed his name out as if it hurt to say it. Before Alice could respond, she added, ‘But he’s got a girlfriend. She’s older than him. And she stays the night. So it will never happen.’
Alice didn’t laugh. Her eyes opened wide as if to accommodate the startling angle this came in on. ‘Raff Cavallo! Because he danced with you?’
‘No. Well, maybe that started it. Why is it weird?’ Tilly hugged her arms around her knees. Now that she’d said it, it seemed silly and childish. Alice might any minute burst out laughing, and they would both admit it was a terrible joke.
But Alice didn’t laugh. She arched her eyebrows as if perplexed.
‘It’s not weird, Till. Well, it is weird, but good weird. I mean I can actually see why you might like him. Because he is hard to work out and he’s got those romantic eyes. He’s just…well, it’s just I can’t imagine him having a girlfriend, actually. I can’t imagine him making that much effort.’
Before Tilly could even begin on her description of Sigrid, Alice flashed on the sudden insight. She lifted a finger and wiggled it. ‘No, I know why you like him. It’s because he’s got a girlfriend which means he’s not running after you. That’s what you like.’
Tilly stubbed out her cigarette on the grass and lay down on her back. She was just as confused now as she had been before. She’d said it out loud because she wanted to put it out in the air and see it. She’d wanted Alice to heave a sigh laden with the tones of at last, now you understand us, now you feel something like we do, we, the-young-in-love-girls. This was what love was, feelings curling up and out of you, beautiful as flowers, blooming in joyous, secret skies.
But Alice had poked a hole through the whole notion. Tilly only liked him because he didn’t like her. It wasn’t a real feeling. It was a trick of Tilly’s mind, a habitual, strangling twist.
But real feelings had erupted in her body while they had danced and when she had seen him again. And she hadn’t stopped thinking about him. She could see his face clearly with her mind’s eye, and she felt some magic had enabled it, and this had to be love’s magic. Life, in that moment, was palpable, brilliant and deep enough to cause rapture. There was a potential there that she hadn’t noticed before.
And she couldn’t even tell if it was she who chose Raff, or if the feeling had just chosen her. Maybe it wasn’t a boyfriend she wanted, maybe it was just that everything conspired to make her think it was.
Alice felt her dismay; her eyes were bright with sympathy and in an appeasing gust of generosity she leaned over, put her hand on Tilly’s. ‘Till, if you want him, I’m sure he will want you too. Boys always do.’
Tilly pedalled home towards the trouble that she would cop from Martha for leaving again. She didn’t care about that trouble; she was more interested in thinking about Raff and her feeling, about whether it was a true feeling or one she had summoned from the long afternoons of summer, because school was finished, because it was time—the time for sex was approaching.