I felt pretty annoyed with Samantha for bailing on me before the gig was even over, but I tried to swallow it down. After all, she had hitched all the way back from Greenham specially to support me; she’d mustered up a gang of friends to come and watch – without whom we’d have had almost no audience at all; she’d danced and looked proud and given me loads of thumbs-ups. I reminded myself that she was a free spirit. She never liked being in one place for long. She’d left a message for me with the barman. I’d see her back at the squat…
But where had she been for the past three hours? There was a worm of unease squiggling around in the pit of my belly when I realised that her friend, the girl with black curly hair, was also nowhere to be seen. The rest of their mates were still in the pub garden, smoking and laughing, but she definitely wasn’t with them.
I was so keen for Samantha to meet Pete; I’d talked incessantly about him to her, and she claimed to be fascinated that I was a twin. Keen – but simultaneously nervous about admitting the truth of our relationship. Pete did have a ‘live and let live’ policy – he wasn’t a prude – but he was quite old-fashioned, and innocent. And perhaps he might not be quite so tolerant when the ‘deviance’ – as my mother would call it – was so close to home.
For the first time ever, I felt a tiny bit glad that my dad wasn’t around anymore. I realised my lip was curling, even just thinking about his reaction. He’d have been completely appalled that I was gay.
It helped with the pain of his loss. Small mercies, and all that shit.
We got all the equipment loaded into the van that Matty had borrowed from his work, and declared the evening a success, celebrating our first live gig with a couple more pints of snakebite and black. Pete was almost as drunk as me, I realised, loosening up as the night went on, losing his country-bumpkin shyness and joining in the banter with the boys at the bar. By the time the skinhead barman called last orders, we’d all had so much snakebite that none of us seemed to be in possession of knees anymore, sagging and staggering and bellowing our songs as we pushed our way out of the pub and wobbled towards the squat. Matty was too drunk to drive, so he said he would pick up the van in the morning.
Samantha wasn’t home when we got in, but my first main concern was monitoring Pete’s reaction to my new abode. He didn’t baulk at the rubbish-tip front garden, with the sofa lying on its back like an old drunk, all its rusty springs on display, or at the boarded-up downstairs windows, but he did a double-take as we got inside and Matty switched on the hurricane lamp in the hallway, which illuminated the damp, peeling walls and bare floorboards.
‘Are you redecorating?’ he asked dubiously as I steered him towards the stairs, pointing out the broken treads and the missing banisters. He stepped gingerly up them as Webbo guffawed behind us.
‘Yeah, darling, this place will look divine by the time the interior designers have finished next week! New carpets are arriving tomorrow, and the chandeliers are being flown in from Paris, and—’
‘Oh shut up, Webbo!’ I said, seeing Pete’s shoulder blades jam hard together as he stiffened his back in embarrassment, chin jutting forwards; a well-worn gesture. I half expected him to click his heels together and salute at the same time whenever he did it. It harked back to his time in his early teens in the Salisbury Sea Cadets (I never understood why Salisbury had Sea Cadets being, as it was, firmly inland). Pete had hated every minute of it, so the back-stiffening was, I thought, some kind of Pavlovian reaction; parade equalling mortification.
‘Why’s there no electricity then?’ he asked.
‘You never been in a squat before, mate?’ Marsh enquired cheerfully.
Pete stopped in the upstairs hallway, so suddenly that I bumped into the back of him. He turned and stared at me. ‘What, you mean you don’t pay rent? You’re living here illegally? Oh my god, Mez! What’s the matter with you? Mum’ll have a conniption fit!’
I rolled my eyes and dragged him into my bedroom, which was illuminated by the sodium orange glow of the street lamp outside the window. ‘Sit,’ I commanded, pointing to the bare mattress. ‘Mum doesn’t need to know it’s a squat. It’s fine. Stop being such an old woman about it.’
Pete flopped back on my mattress, spreading his arms wide, as I lit the two oil lamps on the floor. ‘She’s already going nuts about you moving out and bailing on your A levels, you know.’
Guilt bolted through me, an emotional pile-driver boring down through the beery haze as I set the match to the second wick quickly, before it burned my fingers. ‘I might still do them and go to uni. It’s no big deal!’
Pete wasn’t satisfied. ‘What if you get evicted? Then what?’
I shrugged. ‘I’ll come home, I suppose. Or I’ll go somewhere else, with Samantha.’
‘The famous Samantha. When am I going to meet her?’
At that exact moment, I heard the front door close, and soft footsteps on the stairs, pauses where the feet stepped over the broken ones. I knew the sound of her tread, like I knew the sound of the beat of her heart and the number of freckles on her nose. ‘Now, by the sound of it.’
I couldn’t help glancing at my watch. Almost midnight. She’d been AWOL for more than three hours.
Samantha burst into the room, a crumpled cigarette tucked behind her ear and her hair a wild mess at the back of her head, as if she’d been asleep for hours. Or, as Dad used to say, ‘dragged through a hedge backwards’.
‘Honey! Well done you,’ she drawled, rushing over to me and hugging me in the effusive way she always did, the way that ensued no other hug would ever compare.
‘Was it OK?’ I asked, ever anxious for her approval. The hug may have been big, but the words sounded patronising to my insecure ears.
She kissed me full on the lips. ‘It was fine, for a first gig.’
This was not the high praise I’d hoped for, and my face must have fallen.
‘Mez, that’s bollocks. It was brilliant!’ Pete sat up and glared at Samantha, the flickering flame of the oil lamps casting weird shadows across his face.
He obviously wasn’t going to take it well, then. Part of me was impressed that he’d worked it out so quickly. We hadn’t snogged in front of him, so how did he know Samantha wasn’t just a friend? While intuitive in many practical ways, when it came to emotions and love, he could be remarkably slow on the uptake.
‘You must be Pete! I’ve heard so much about you. I’m Samantha. Delighted to meet you.’ She stuck out her hand and subjected him to her highest-watt, most cornfed smile.
To my dismay and horror, Pete completely dissed her. He stared at her for a moment, as if she was some sort of alien, got up from the mattress and acting as if she wasn’t even there, turned to me. ‘Where’s the loo? I’m dying for a slash. If you even have a bog in this dump – or do you just piss out of a window?’
He stomped out of the room before I’d had time to answer, and for a moment Samantha and I just stared at each other.
‘Wow,’ she said contemptuously. ‘You didn’t tell me he was a homophobic prick.’
‘He’s not!’ I replied hotly. ‘He must have just … worked it out, and it’s a shock for him because I’m his sister. He’ll come round.’
Samantha pouted and put a hand on her hip. ‘What, so I have to suck up to him till he forgives me for turning his precious twin into a nasty dyke like me? He can go screw himself!’
I’d never heard her talk like that before. She was occasionally terse when she had PMT, but this was a new and very unwelcome tone.
‘Samantha, what’s the matter?’ I asked. ‘Where have you been all evening, babe? We missed you after our set.’
Samantha plucked the cigarette from behind her ear, stuck it between her lips, squatted down on her haunches and picked up the matchbox from the floor. Her spotty dress had some kind of net underskirt that bunched out around her. I wondered where she’d got it from – I’d never seen them before; neither the dress nor the petticoat. Not for the first time, I realised how little I knew about her. How did she have the cash for new clothes?
I waited, but she didn’t speak, just sucked on her cigarette.
‘Nice dress, by the way. That new?’
Still no answer. Then, ‘What’s it to you?’
I was flabbergasted. ‘Pardon?’
‘Pardon?’ she mimicked, and I felt tears of confusion spring into my eyes. It had been the best night of my life, and now she and Pete were ruining it.
‘Don’t you sodding talk to my sister like that.’ Pete was back – there must have been someone in the bathroom. He stood in the doorway glowering at us both. Samantha got to her feet in one lithe moment, squaring up to him.
‘Pete! What the fuck?’
He approached her and with a forefinger jabbed her in the chest, above her right breast. She growled – an actual low growl of rage.
Then he turned to me. ‘You’re sleeping with her, aren’t you?’
‘We’re in love,’ I said defensively, and Pete snorted.
I put my hand on his arm but he shook it off. The three of us were standing in a small circle around the oil lamp, angry elves around a magic toadstool. A poisonous toadstool, I thought, drunkenly.
I took a deep breath. ‘Pete, I realise this is a bit of a shock. Perhaps I should’ve told you first, but I wanted you to meet Samantha…’ My voice wobbled. ‘Please don’t judge her – us – until you know her better. I’m so happy, Pete, honestly. I’ve never been happier.’
Pete looked me in the face. Suddenly, and for the first time, he seemed so much older than me. There was sadness as well as anger in his eyes.
‘Yeah, you really look it right now.’
Samantha lunged for him then, eyes narrowed, cigarette still in the corner of her mouth. I had to put my arms round her waist from behind and drag her away from him, kicking and screaming so loudly that Webbo and Marsh appeared in the doorway, their eyes bloodshot and their movements sluggish.
‘What’s going on?’
Samantha wrestled her way out of my grip, grabbed her still-full rucksack and pushed past the boys. ‘I’m gonna leave you children to it,’ she said coldly. ‘Seeya, Meredith. It’s been real, but I’ve got more important things to do with my life.’
I was reeling. Surely she couldn’t mean what it sounded like she meant?
‘Samantha! Stay. Please!’ I moved towards her, but Pete held my forearm, then hugged me so tightly that I couldn’t extricate myself before I heard the bang of the front door.
Samantha was gone.
Webbo and Marsh sloped away, leaving Pete to deal with me. He tried to comfort me, but I was too drunk and distraught, and I lashed out at him.
‘This is your fault! You wound her up and now she’s gone!’
‘Mez, if that’s how easily wound-up she gets, you don’t want to hang around with her.’
I made furious speech marks with my fingers. ‘I don’t “hang around” with her. We were – are – in a relationship! Why is that so hard for you to accept? We’ve been together for over a year!’
I refused to allow myself to consider that Samantha had been AWOL for at least three-quarters of this time.
Pete slumped back on my mattress, looking utterly shell-shocked. It was a surprise, for both of us – we almost never argued. But at that moment I wanted to punish him, make him feel the same pain I was feeling. He scrubbed the back of his hand across his eyes but I couldn’t tell if he was crying. Even in my fury, I hoped not. I’d never seen him cry, not since we were little kids. He hadn’t even cried at Dad’s funeral.
‘I didn’t want to tell you this, Mez, but I saw her earlier. She was in the pub garden when I arrived, kissing that girl with the black hair, when you were on stage. I didn’t think that much of it, apart from the fact I’ve never seen girls snogging before so, you know, I noticed. That’s why I was frosty with her when she showed up here.’
‘I don’t believe you,’ I sobbed, although of course I did. Deep down I’d known all along, as soon as I saw Samantha look at that girl. I just couldn’t bear to admit it.
‘Oh, come on. You think I’d make up something like that? Of course I wouldn’t!’
‘You just can’t cope with me being gay.’
‘THIS IS NOT ABOUT ME!’ he yelled, suddenly as furious as I was. ‘Why can’t you just stop blaming me? In fact, why can’t you think about someone other than yourself for a change? You just walk out, leave me to cope with Mum, who’s in a right state by the way, not that you give a shit. You haven’t even asked how she is!’
‘I talk to her!’ I shouted back. ‘I ring her once a week!’
‘Whoop-de-doo,’ said Pete. ‘You ring her for five minutes once a week from a phone box and think you’ve done your duty; but every single day of the week I have to deal with her crying her eyes out. She misses Dad like crazy, and now she has to worry about you too, living on your own, dropping out of school, moving in with people she’s never met and knows nothing about. Now I can see why you haven’t told her anything about them, because they’re a bunch of druggy, benefit-scrounging losers, aren’t they?’
He did at least drop his voice when he said that, but I was in too much of a frenzy to do the same.
‘How dare you talk about my friends like that! You know what, why don’t you just fuck off back to Salisbury? Go running back to Mum and tell her what a mess I’m making of my life. I’m sure you’ll take great pleasure in it. I wish you’d never come!’
‘Oh, and here comes the self-pity. That’s predictable. OK, well, fine. I’ll go. And don’t worry, I won’t tell Mum anything that will stress her out even more than she already is. You just carry on, pleasing yourself and letting everyone else pick up the pieces. You always do.’
He hauled himself off the mattress and picked up his backpack and sleeping bag and for the second time that night, someone I loved walked out of my life.
‘Oh, and by the way,’ was his parting shot. ‘You aren’t even gay. You’re just weak.’
It would be five years before I next saw him, and I never saw Samantha again. I never had another gay relationship, either. So as much as I resented him saying what he said, I guess he was right.