‘I think you’ve already got that one,’ I said, looking down at the latest book Jamie had added to the growing pile of manuals in his arms.
‘Different make of car, babe,’ he said, dropping to a crouch to better examine the lower shelf of the bookcase in the charity shop. While he surveyed the books, I admired the view of his broad shoulders and the way his T-shirt separated enticingly from the waistband of his jeans. Admittedly, browsing through second-hand books wasn’t the most thrilling way of spending a Saturday morning, but Jamie’s excitement at finding a cache of car repair manuals was how I imagined mine would be on finding a first edition of the dragon books I’d loved as a child.
I wandered away from the bookcase and began idly flicking through a stack of old CDs. I tucked a couple of classical music ones that I thought Gran might appreciate under one arm. It had been two weeks since the unfortunate Sunday lunch with my parents, and although Gran had seemed remarkably okay with how things had gone, I couldn’t help but worry about her.
‘I always knew your dad would struggle to understand,’ she had said, taking up a chair to one side of the baby grand piano in Sunnymede’s lounge. I was busy adjusting the height of the stool, but paused to look over at my elderly grandmother. She was bathed in a nimbus of sunlight from the window behind her. It shone through her hair and gave her an almost ethereal appearance, like an angel emerging from a cloud.
To be honest, Gran didn’t appear to be as troubled as I’d feared she might have been by my dad’s reaction. ‘Remember, I’ve known him longer than you have, my love,’ she’d said, squeezing my hand warmly beneath hers. ‘After forty-four years, there’s very little about your dad that is likely to surprise me. I’d have been far more shocked if he’d simply accepted it.’
From my bag I pulled a sheaf of music that I’d been struggling with for weeks.
‘Ah, Sibelius’s Fifth,’ Gran said softly, as though greeting an old friend. She waited as I set the music up on the piano stand and then inclined her head encouragingly as my fingers hovered above the polished ivory keys. This was where we connected better than anywhere else. This was the place where we spoke a secret language the rest of our family didn’t understand. In the music we found a common harmony, but more important than that, we found each other. I gave her one last smile and began to play.
*
A noise from the pavement jerked me back to the present. The charity shop was particularly busy, so busy that perhaps I was the only person who’d noticed the young woman in the wheelchair outside, struggling to open the door. I rushed over to help her, holding it wide as she expertly lined up her chair to glide through the opening and into the shop.
‘Thank you so much,’ she said, smiling up at me as I squashed myself as flat as a cartoon character against the wall to get out of her way. There was something vaguely familiar about her face, something that rang a distant bell in my memory, but I couldn’t quite place her.
‘Yes, thank you,’ echoed a deep voice from a tall attractive man wearing Clark Kent glasses, who’d come up behind the chair and guided it through the doorway with practised ease.
‘I thought you were going to wait for me,’ the man said, bending low and kissing the side of the woman’s neck. It was a curiously intimate gesture, one that a stranger should probably not witness, but pinioned as I was behind the door I really had nowhere else to go.
Once the chair was clear of the door, I pushed it to a close, getting one more dazzling smile from the woman’s companion. He had to be at least fifteen years older than me, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t appreciate the dark good looks that were every bit as arresting as Jamie’s blond ones were. My eyes flitted between the two men. All we needed now was for George Clooney to put in an appearance and every demographic would be catered for.
I gave myself a sharp mental reprimand as I crossed the shop to rejoin Jamie. I was in danger of being just as bad as my father in judging people on their appearance rather than the way they behaved. But somehow I didn’t think I’d been wrong about that man. I glanced back towards the counter, where the couple were patiently waiting to be served. They were holding hands, and he only released hers as he reached for a long oblong box, which he placed on the counter. I saw the flash of a ring on his left hand. Once again there was a peculiar feeling that I knew this couple from somewhere, but I just couldn’t remember from where.
My interest in them had tipped over from idle curiosity to downright nosiness, and as Jamie was still immersed in diagrams of car engines, I kept watching as the man looked down at the woman, an easy-to-read question on his face. Are you sure? She looked up at him and nodded just once in confirmation. The man lifted the lid of the box, which infuriatingly was angled towards the woman behind the counter, giving me no clue as to what was inside it. The assistant reached into the container and something that looked a little like a billowing white cloud spilled out from one side. I caught a glimpse of a bodice scattered with sparkly beading and wisps of a flowing chiffon skirt.
‘All done?’ asked Jamie, nodding towards a second counter on this side of the shop. His books were already stacked up beside the till, and without a second thought he took the CDs for my grandmother from beneath my arm and added them to the pile. It was no surprise when he refused to let me pay for them.
‘You can buy the popcorn at the cinema tonight,’ he said by way of a compromise. I slipped my arm through his and reached up to deposit a thank-you kiss on his cheek, which already felt scratchy with stubble. As we left the shop to rejoin the Saturday morning crowds, I felt one final tug drawing my focus back towards the couple at the counter. I couldn’t explain my fascination with them, and fortunately Jamie hadn’t seemed to notice my rapt attention in two total strangers. As the door swung to a close behind me, I saw the shop assistant take the box they’d brought with them and place it beneath the counter. Even that felt important somehow, yet I had no idea why.
*
‘Oh shit,’ I muttered, glancing through the crowds and spotting a face I was more used to seeing peering over the back garden fence.
‘What’s wrong?’ asked Jamie. His arm, which was looped around my shoulders, pulled me closer to his side. I stiffened, even though I knew I shouldn’t, and of course he felt it. He looked up and followed the direction of my panicked gaze. ‘Who is that?’ he asked, his arm already falling away.
‘That’s our next-door neighbour, Mrs Blake. She’s…’ I felt a bit disloyal here, because there was no real malice in the woman who’d lived next door to my family for as long as I could remember. ‘She’s kind of a chatterbox,’ I finished lamely.
Jamie understood, in a way that made me feel as though I was quite possibly the worst girlfriend in the entire world. Any girl – many girls – would be over the moon to be in my position, and yet here I was acting as though my relationship with Jamie was a grubby little secret that had to be hidden. All because of some outmoded idea my father had about who was, and who wasn’t, good enough for me. Jamie had already taken a broad step to one side, his hands now thrust into the pockets of his jeans. He knew the drill.
Mrs Blake hadn’t spotted me yet, so there was probably still time for us to duck into a nearby shop until she had passed. Jamie had slowed his pace and was now walking half a step behind me, a position where he could feasibly pass as just another shopper in the crowd.
It happened quite suddenly, with very little forethought or regard to the consequences of my actions. Afterwards, I liked to tell myself that I’d heard my grandmother’s voice in my head, silently encouraging me, but in truth I could hear very little except the rush of blood in my ears caused by a surge of adrenaline. Fight or flight, wasn’t that what that particular hormone was intended for? Who knew at the very last moment I would decide not to run, but to stand my ground?
Jamie’s face was a picture of astonishment as I spun on my heel and placed my hands on his shoulders. It wasn’t a passionate kiss, but our lips lingered long enough to ensure that anyone watching us couldn’t mistake it for a casual greeting. Jamie was caught off balance in every sense of the word, and with his hands still buried in his pockets it’s a wonder we didn’t end up on the pavement being trampled underfoot by the Saturday morning shoppers.
We’d only just broken apart when a voice called out my name, just as I’d known it surely would.
‘Mandy, what a surprise… seeing you here, I mean.’
I think we all knew Mrs Blake was probably more surprised by the kiss she’d just seen than by bumping into one of her neighbours in the high street, which – let’s face it – was hardly surprising at all.
We exchanged the usual round of ‘how are you?’s and ‘how are your parents?’, and all the while we were speaking I kept my arm firmly hooked through Jamie’s.
‘And is this your young man?’ Mrs Blake asked eventually.
Why had I waited so long to find this courage? Why hadn’t I realised how wonderfully liberating it would be to look up at the tall handsome boy beside me and say with a proud smile: ‘Yes. Yes it is. This is Jamie, my boyfriend.’
*
Sometime between my bold show of confidence in the high street and half past seven that evening, my fearlessness had begun to ebb away.
‘Are you sure it’s a good idea?’ Jamie had asked, as we’d nibbled on paninis in our favourite café. ‘Maybe we should ease your parents into the idea a little more gradually?’
I swallowed down a mouthful of practically molten cheese before answering him.
‘No. We should definitely do this. I’m only suggesting that you knock on our front door and pick me up this evening – it’s not like I’m asking them if you can move in.’
Jamie gave a shrug and a crooked half-smile, looking so much like he belonged in an indie rock band that the waitress walking by our table did a visible double take. Jamie didn’t notice. He never did.
‘If you’re sure,’ he said, his voice still weighty with doubt.
‘I’m sure,’ I declared, reaching for his hand across the tabletop and entwining my fingers with his.
And I had been sure: when we’d kissed goodbye on the street corner; when I’d watched him leave to spend the afternoon fixing a mate’s car; even when I was meant to be thinking only about the machinations of Oliver Cromwell as I wrote an essay, I’d still been convinced my plan was sound.
The doubts started creeping in as I stood beneath the shower, with Molton Brown gel pooling in bright orange puddles at my feet. What would Dad say when he opened the door and saw Jamie standing on the doorstep? A horrible image of him simply shutting it in my boyfriend’s face got caught in the loops of my imagination and refused to leave it. No. Dad wouldn’t be rude, would he? Not to Jamie’s face?
I glanced at the clock as I towelled myself dry. There was still time to call it off, to save this confrontation for a less turbulent period for my family. But as I was reaching for my mobile to change our plans, my grandmother’s face seemed to materialise before me, like a senior citizen version of Jiminy Cricket. Do the right thing, it said. With a worried sigh, I laid down my phone.
All I’d told them was that a friend was calling for me on the way to the cinema. Not exactly a lie, but not entirely the truth either. All I had to do was make sure that I was still upstairs when the doorbell rang and that Dad answered it, and the rest… would hopefully fall into place. Admittedly, it wasn’t a particularly well-thought-out plan, so it was hardly surprising that things didn’t work out the way I’d hoped.
I was in my room, dressed and ready to go but pretending not to be, when Jamie messaged me with a prediction:
Your front doorbell is about to ring in ten seconds.
He was right, but what he didn’t know was that so was the home telephone. I was peering through a crack in my bedroom door and heard Dad call out ‘I’ll get it’, but I had no way of knowing if he meant the door or the phone.
Murphy’s Law decreed that it was Mum who emerged from the kitchen to answer the front door. Given that she’d as good as admitted that she knew I was still seeing Jamie, his arrival had far less impact than I’d anticipated.
‘Hello. It’s… er, Jamie, isn’t it? Why don’t you come in for a moment? I don’t think Mandy’s quite ready yet.’ She glanced up the staircase and caught me hanging over the banisters watching them.
‘I’m on my way,’ I called down, hopping around on one foot as I hurriedly fastened my sandals. I was already halfway down the staircase when Jamie stepped into the hallway.
‘Thank you,’ he replied, giving my mother his most charming smile. ‘Jamie McDonald,’ he introduced, going for an unexpected handshake. ‘It’s very nice to finally get to meet you properly, Mrs Preston.’
There was something wrong with the hand I saw him extend to my mother, and it took me several moments to realise what it was. It was red, or at least an exceedingly deep shade of pink, as though it had been scrubbed within an inch of its life to remove every trace of oil that it would have been covered with after working on his friend’s car. He’d done that for me, I knew that, and all at once my heart seemed to need much more space in my chest cavity than it usually required. Jamie was also wearing a far more formal shirt than a trip to the cinema necessitated, and instead of being rolled up to reveal his forearms, it was securely buttoned at his wrists and almost up to his neck. There wasn’t a single tattoo in sight. It was a strange moment to suddenly realise that I was in love with this boy, but then recently my life had been full of strange moments.
Something that didn’t seem likely to happen, however, was the opportunity to reintroduce Jamie to my dad. The phone call was proving to be a lengthy one and didn’t sound as though it was winding to a conclusion anytime soon. Dad had always been a phone pacer, and tonight was no exception. He was patrolling the kitchen as he spoke, glancing our way every time a circuit took him past the open doorway. The glimpses I caught were too fleeting to decipher. Perhaps that was just as well.
‘It was very nice meeting you again, Jamie,’ said my mother, surprisingly sounding quite sincere. She’d always been a sucker for good manners, and no one could deny that Jamie’s had been impeccable. ‘I hope we’ll see you again soon.’
I waited until we were outside and the front door was securely shut behind us before letting out a long, low breath of relief.
‘I think that went quite well.’
‘At least your Dad wasn’t sitting on the porch cleaning his shotgun,’ Jamie said with a laugh. It was funny, but from the look in his eyes I suspected he was only half joking.