Though Amma’s over-annotated copy of No Logo might have protested, Starbucks on Northcote Road was the place chosen for them to meet: an easy 295 from the florist in Parsons Green where Roisin was working and far enough from Brixton to avoid bumping into Mum, Belinda or anyone else. As Amma queued for coffee, she again found crediting Belinda’s nastiness difficult. The image of Belinda’s turned back after the fireworks was the most inhumane part of it all; a tense, humped thing seen through hot tears. How could they speak after that?
Fixing on the now, Amma flourished a twenty, requested and paid for her second soya latte. She concentrated on things like cutting the wooden stirrer through froth and opening the sugar packet. And then the difficulties of the present came again: that this meeting had been repeatedly postponed by a series of Roisin’s laconic texts. And even on this, the date they had firmlyfirmlyfirmly agreed on, a good week and a half after first contact, Roisin was late and Amma had been waiting, like a twat, for twenty-five minutes. What was she expecting to come of their little rendezvous? What could she expect? The mood was not eased by the two Brazilian or Portuguese baristas behind the counter who kept singing that Moloko song, making up the lyrics they couldn’t quite remember.
Sinking into a leather sofa, Amma smiled at a nearby woman in a primrose twinset who assessed her too intently. Had all the careful amendments to her school uniform been excessive? Was the kohl on the eyes artlessly smudged? Were the rips in her tights too salacious?
‘Fidgety knickers. Like a Pina Bausch.’ Roisin’s voice came from the corner of the café, accompanied by a snatch of busy, outside sounds: sighing buses, pleading homeless. Roisin’s face was flushed and her irises still that wet shade of slate. There was a force in those eyes, or perhaps a new maturity. Amma rested the mug against her teeth and breathed not only through steam but also through the sensation that the situation was already far beyond her control.
‘I’ve been watching you from the other side of the road for about three minutes. Shuffling away and all neurotic with your precious little hands.’
‘Are they little?’
‘They’re smaller than mine. See.’ Amma let Roisin’s warm palm press against her damper one. She was immediately regretful about the giggled, giddy sound she produced. The larger white hand withdrew and Amma watched the redhead chew her lips and deliberate.
‘What?’
‘I’m not sure, Amma. I’m not.’
‘Of what? What?’
‘I can’t tell what you’re feeling, thinking any more.’
‘Forgive me, like, if I speak out of turn, but that may be a fucking consequence –’
‘So we can’t begin more lightly? Like, I was going to start with how much I’m loving this gap-yearing-working shit. We had this nightmare lady come into the florist, in furs and making demands all over the place, and I got her to buy the most expensive, beautiful peonies. Fat, rough-looking things – sort of like bloated drunk old men, but also totally pretty –’
‘Roisin – I was really sad to not, not have you around any more. For you to just disappear like that. So sad, fucking sad, Roisin. And, and, like, what could I do?’
‘I needed … not distance, that’s too trite, let’s try … a chance … to puzzle through it all, without, without –’
‘Me?’
‘Because that’s exactly how it seemed; in my head, a jigsaw. All these fragmented bits that were obviously interconnected but with a logic entirely escaping me. So I needed to figure out how to get them, get them all together. Or something. Oh, fuck this.’
‘OK. And, you’ve done that now, have you? Puzzled through?’
‘Like, let me load myself up, and then I’ll be back, mm? You’re all right for drinks, yes?’
‘Yeah. Thanks.’
‘And I can’t tempt you to a little pastry deliciousness? Their friands are often actually quite home-madey and tasty.’ Roisin took off her coat, revealed a green apron stamped with a cheery sunflower.
‘No, but. Come back quickly.’ Amma reached for that hand again and clutched it. Roisin smiled a small smile. The twinset lady, however, winced.
Roisin turned away, counted coins, pointed at something puffed and crowned with walnuts. Moments like these struck Amma the hardest: how to behave with someone who you’d loved, had sex with, when you were back in the world? That had happened every night at Brunswick: Roisin’s honest pressure against the shyest part of Amma. Then the shift, when all of Roisin’s actions softened – flick of wrist, circling of thumb, adjustment of tongue. It seemed so full of planning, but also invented on the spot. Now how could their discussion be so ordinary? Friands, peonies … the weather, what was on each other’s fucking Christmas lists, useless chit-chat amongst all the yummy mummies and freelancers. They could do much more than that.
With a dead grin, one of the baristas wiped the table and collected empties. Amma lifted her mug. She wanted to remind the girl walking back towards her how her black body shivered and sweated and changed each time they had said goodnight that week, before they curled into their separate beds. But she also knew that was redundant now. That nightly separation was to be turned into a longer, more final one. Everything was unjust.
‘It’s good to see you.’ Roisin sat, patted her piled gloves and ursine hat.
‘And you. You too.’
‘I should give you the explanation you deserve.’ Roisin used her own wooden stirrer to slice a layer of cream from her mocha then dropped the mess onto a white serviette to ooze. ‘I got quite panicked. You, really panicked me.’
‘How? I never meant to. I’d never mean for you to feel anything like that, Roisin.’
‘It paralysed me. Like, you wanting to see me all the time?’
‘But,’ Amma needed to go slowly, ‘but weren’t we both, like, phew! At least we live in the same city so, like, we could almost keep going, keep … being how we’d been? You were fucking crying when we left Brunswick. Cry-ing, Roisin. And you had that silly line: London is a tiny place and we will make it even smaller.’
‘I did, didn’t I?’
‘Yes, Roisin.’
‘I think it’s different now, though. Isn’t it? You see that too.’
Amma’s jaw was heavy. She was supposed to be clever. Yet there she sat, eyeing the grim remnants of an overpriced drink, tripped up by her own longing.
She inhaled as Roisin started up. ‘Don’t do that.’
‘Not doing anything.’
‘You’re being all sweet, and perfect, and lovely.’
‘Thank you.’
‘It’s a problem, not a compliment.’
‘Right.’
Amma wondered how an exit might be conducted with dignity; mightn’t come across as melodramatic flouncing. She stroked the mug’s iconic logo like it were a talisman. She could only produce childish words, ‘This is a horrid, horrid way to be dumped.’
‘I don’t like to think of myself as dumping, as a dumper. “Dumper” suggests powerful, implies a power. I lack that. I’m … stumbling around and hoping for the best.’
‘Best for who?’
‘Yes. Best for me. All right, for me. Because I’m young, I’m eighteen. So. So, I had an amazing time at Brunswick with you. That is true. Totally.’ Roisin scratched her head too much: a bad soap actor playing mad. ‘You’re too beautiful. And so special. But really, truly, I think I liked it because it was only this … only meant to be this short and fiery and ephemeral thing. A supernova sort of moment. Blinding.’
‘Blinding?’
‘Maybe I didn’t see straight for a while.’ Roisin giggled. ‘If you’ll excuse the terrible pun.’
‘But we planned so much. A trip to go and see those curtains at the Geffrye Museum you said were too gorgeous to believe. And going to your parents’ flat in Pigalle. And that pub on the river with the burlesquey men. All of that. Look, I had no clue what it was either, but I was certainly under the impression that we were at the beginning of something. That was so exciting and we couldn’t have been closer, Roisin.’
‘I can’t force myself to mirror your heart. I’m sorry for that.’
‘But you said.’
‘I say a lot. So do you. That’s the problem with being pretentious.’
‘Not pretend for me. And now I sort of feel stuck. Because I’m really into this?’ Amma wished she could be less honest. ‘Fuck!’
‘Amma, listen. I want to do everything. All of it. Life is full of thrills for us. Surely we only limit our bigger selves by fixating on a silly Sapphic … holiday romance.’
‘And you were worried about being trite before?’ The air around Amma seemed hot and hostile. The primrose twinset lady did not know where to put her eyes.
‘It was an experience. A totally amazing experience.’
‘Why did you even bother to get in touch with me? It had been months: why not maintain the silence? Would’ve been easier, surely?’
‘I realised that wasn’t fair. I realised that.’
‘Wait.’ In a frenzy, Amma rummaged in her rucksack. ‘This is fucking ridiculous – where is it?’
After wrestling with folders and crumpled papers, she pulled out a bracelet. Jangling from it: a pair of little charms, ‘A’ and ‘R’ tiles from the Scrabble game they had played the second day they had known each other, when Roisin had saluted the board and wolf-whistled Amma’s match-winning ‘Faqir’.
‘I did this for you. Doesn’t look like it, but it was really fiddly. And I spent ages choosing the right shade for the thread because I wanted to get something that went with your hair and your eyes as well. And a colour I was sure you’d like. So.’ Amma dropped it on the table. ‘But it’s nothing that you need to keep. I just thought I’d show it to you before I threw it away or whatever.’
Amma pressed the empty mug. She let Roisin’s precise features crunch through a series of useless emotions, none of which ever made the girl’s face ugly.