Come Together Read online

Jack narrows his eyes and looks at me. He looks non-plussed, but then shrugs and says, ‘Why not?’

  At first I’m not sure I’ve heard him right. I ogle at him with my mouth open until it sinks in.

  ‘Cool!’ I gush, like I’ve had an electric shock. I’m so grateful, I want to kiss his feet. How could I ever have thought that Matt’s were nicer?

  As we go back to my flat to pick up a dress (suspenders and heels not being suitable beachwear) I keep looking at Jack, checking that he’s real. That he’s here.

  But he is here. In my kitchen. I’ve got a second chance! I feel that this at least justifies a headline or two in the national tabloids, WORLD EXCLUSIVE: ELEVENTH HOUR RESCUE FOR GIRL ON SHELF.

  I leave him trying to extricate the ice tray from the polar icecap of W12 and waltz into my bedroom where I kiss my teddy.

  ‘Ted, I’ve got a man doing man things in my kitchen!’ I whisper. Ted looks back at me with his usual glazed expression. ‘Well don’t just sit there, what am I going to wear?’

  I rip off my clothes and rummage round in the cupboard for my blue sundress, but when I put it on, I notice a red wine stain on the left tit. Typical. I revert to frayed shorts and a sun-top. Too casual? Too Charlie’s Angels? Ted, help me out here!

  Jack’s travelling light. He’s only taking what he’s standing up in. How do blokes do that? How do they feel secure without a comprehensive set of grooming equipment and a cheque-book with them at all times? I don’t understand. Before I know it, I’ve accumulated a pile of stuff on my bed that would do me for a three-week holiday, and that’s only the essentials: hairbrush, make-up, bikini (dare I?), sunglasses, beach towel, jeans (just in case it gets cold), cardy and spare knickers (I am my mother’s daughter), deodorant, baseball cap – they keep on coming.

  I rummage round in my top drawer, aware that I’m humming ‘We’re all going on a summer holiday’ like I’m Cliff Richard and knowing that I’d better get a move on because otherwise I’ll move on to a rendition of ‘The hills are alive with the sound of music’ and that would be too embarrassing. I flip the lid off my perfume and engulf myself in a generous cloud, even giving my pubes a squirt for good measure.

  I’m just about to ram the drawer shut when I spy the condoms. I grip the bumper box tightly, making a wish on them. Please, please, please make Jack want to shag me again … Hang on, these are extra long ones! Shit!

  I know Jack is well endowed, but not abnormally so, not in a way that would justify super schlong johnnies. I fly to my chest of junk in the corner and locate a big paper bag full of supersonic extra extra safe ones in various flavours courtesy of the tight-lipped woman at the family planning clinic. They’re probably all way out of date by now, but I’ve no time to check.

  ‘What are you doing in there?’ calls Jack from the kitchen.

  ‘Two ticks,’ I chirp, dropping to my knees and trying to find a bag under the bed. The only one I can find is gigantic, but it’ll have to do. I pile in my stuff and empty the boxes of condoms into it as well (might as well be spoilt for choice). I breeze into the kitchen.

  ‘What have you got in there?’ asks Jack, handing me a glass of iced Ribena. ‘A bucket and spade?’

  ‘Of course!’ I smile and down my drink. ‘Come on, let’s go.’

  Despite the fact that I feel like I’m on speed, Jack’s still being a bit distant and we stand awkwardly in the ticket queue at Victoria. There’s four inches of uncrossable air space between our hands and I measure it with my eyes, wishing I had the courage to reach across it. But I don’t. I’m too aware that the intimacy we shared last night can’t be recreated in a public space, not with the tannoy going off all the time.

  So Jack’s being cool. That’s OK, I can do cool too.

  I think.

  Except that he looks so bloody attractive in his T-shirt that I wonder how long I can keep it up without bursting. However, I’ve made a pact with myself. NO MORE CHEESY COMMENTS and NO BEGGING.

  When we get to the ticket window, I grope around in my tardis bag for my purse, but Jack won’t hear of me paying and casually throws down his Visa card. I sigh inwardly, listening to the whirring of his brownie points racking up in my brain.

  At the kiosk we buy supplies: a bottle of water, chewing gum and fags. I stand behind Jack watching in awe. He’s so assertive!

  ‘What time’s the train?’ he asks.

  A simple enough question, but I’m being such a teenager that I go all of a dither. I squint up at the departures board, but it’s a blur. Is this because I need glasses or because Jack is standing so close and I can’t concentrate on anything other than repressing my desire to grab him?

  We have to sprint to make the train. He pulls me up through the door just in time and for a second I’m in his arms. I put my hand on his chest and he doesn’t let me go when our eyes meet. I’m swallowed in his eyes and the train jolts forward and my stomach lurches all at the same time. I think Jack feels something too because he blushes and sort of laughs.

  He breaks away and I follow him into the carriage, holding my breath. It’s fairly empty and there’s a whole set of seats free by the window.

  ‘Here,’ says Jack, reaching for my bag to put it into the overhead rack.

  It’s one of those moments where life goes into slow motion.

  I watch, horrified, as he swings it upwards by one strap which tips the balance and all of my belongings cascade to the floor between us. Everything. Including all the condoms.

  There’s silence as we both look down at them.

  ‘Well, um, Amy,’ he says, stroking his cheek. ‘We’re only going for the day. Isn’t this a bit … enthusiastic?’

  I feel sick. I drop to the floor and scrabble around to pick everything up. Even my split ends have gone pink.

  ‘I didn’t buy all these. I, I got them from the family planning …’ I start, but I know that I’m making things ten times worse.

  ‘That’s very… forward thinking of you.’

  Bollocks. What he means is it’s very forward of me. Forward as in jumping the gun like a brazen, psycho woman forward. Roughly, I shove the condoms back in my bag. I feel like such an idiot, I want to do a runner down the corridor and hurl myself out of the train. I’m painfully aware that anything I say will just incriminate me more.

  Jack just snorts with laughter and collapses on to the seat. I crouch down and bury my face in my hands. I can’t look at him, but he starts to laugh so much that eventually I look through my fingers.

  ‘You’ve gone so red!’

  ‘Oh God. What must you think?’ I moan.

  He pulls me up on to his lap and cuddles me. ‘I think I can’t wait to make a start on them,’ he whispers, and then he puts a cool hand on my burning cheek and kisses me with such intensity that I forget that I’m probably squashing him and spiral into weightless joy.

  By the time we reach Brighton it seems incredible that there was ever any frostiness between us. We’ve been chatting like we’re old mates, telling each other about past holidays and family stuff and it feels normal. Like we’re friends. We’re still babbling on to each other as we walk through the town to the beach. The sun is glinting on the water and there’s people stripping off everywhere and you can smell the summer in the air, along with the wafts of waffle and candy floss from the stalls on the pier.

  There’s something about the heat that’s so infectious, that in no time at all, I’ve regressed to childhood and I really do start wishing I’d brought a bucket and spade. All I want to do is muck about and Jack is obviously up for it. I grab his hand and drag him towards the pier and it feels like I’m five and he’s my partner in crime and we’re off to the swings.

  We lark about on the pier and stuff our faces with ice lollies and laugh at each other behind the cardboard cutouts, and it may not be cool, and we may not be mentioning last night, but it doesn’t matter. It’s just great to be out of London, away from everyone else, and I start to feel so relaxed that I forget about being cool, or t
rying to impress him. It’s enough that we’re together.

  By the time we hit the arcade, Jack’s in his element and I laugh at him being such a big kid. It’s amazing how much you can find out about a person when they hit a simulated racing game. It sort of distills someone’s personality and I find out that Jack is:

  a) competitive

  b) a very bad loser

  I vow never to play Monopoly with him.

  ‘I’m going to whip your arse, girl,’ says Nigel Mansell Rossiter, dropping his coin in the slot.

  ‘Oh really? Is that a fact?’ I adjust my seat. ‘We’ll see about that, shall we?’

  And we’re off, careering round the Monaco circuit, and I glance over at Jack being buffeted by the hydraulics and biting his lip with concentration and I resist the urge to melt into a pile of goo, because I want to beat him. And by sheer fluke, I do. Three times.

  Thank you God, I owe you one.

  Jack can’t deal with it. He’s seriously put out when I refuse another game and won’t let him win.

  ‘It’s all about knowing when to stop. About quitting when you’re ahead,’ I tease, flouncing back into the sunshine. Jack’s practically scraping the floor with one foot. I half expect him to yell, ‘But you’re only a girl!’ but in some perverse way, I know he’s impressed. I look over my shoulder at him and grin smugly. ‘Don’t sulk, Jack.’

  That’s it. He chases me and I run, squealing up the walkway, dodging round the kids and the grannies and I’m into the fair and running to the end of the pier and he catches me, trapping me against the balustrade. He sort of growls, but there’s a big grin on his face and all of a sudden we’re snogging like fourteen-year-olds, all clashing teeth and lashing orange-lolly-flavoured tongues. When a kid goes past us and shouts ‘Urghhh’ with his mates, we both giggle and Jack pulls away. There’s a tent in his shorts and we laugh.

  He leans on the railing and looks down at the water lapping round the pier. I turn the other way and rest back on my elbows. The rattle of the roller coaster car drifts towards us on the warm breeze, followed by delighted screaming as it plummets down the track.

  ‘You’re beautiful, you’re amazing,’ says Jack suddenly, ‘you’ve got the most wonderful smile.’

  I close one eye against the glint of the sun and look down at him. It’s the first time he’s paid me a sober compliment and I’m dumbfounded. He looks bashful and covers up the moment.

  ‘It’d be nice to dive in,’ he says, nodding to the water, but I can’t say anything because a truck load of endorphins is jack-knifing across my nerve endings.

  He takes my hand, but I’ve got sweaty palms and I try to wriggle out of his grip. Jack notices, but he just grips my hand tighter and kisses my knuckles.

  ‘Come on, let’s go to the beach,’ he winks.

  I think being a grown-up is just about the hardest thing you can do. It’s much worse than exams or anything like that, and what’s worse, no one ever prepares you for it. No one tells you that one day, sometime in your twenties, everyone will expect you to be different. A grown-up. An adult with responsibilities like bills and mortgages and decisions to make with no fuss. And there’s only one thing worse than being a grown-up and that’s being a single grown-up.

  I know I shouldn’t admit this. I know I should be just fine. I read enough sanctimonious women’s magazines to realise that by being a woman in the nineties, I should be, by definition, completely relaxed with my own company and totally independent; self-sufficient in every area of my life, including things like DIY; successful in my career and financially sorted; able to withstand all forms of criticism; happy at all times because I’m nurturing my spiritual growth.

  But it’s all just crap. Most of the time I don’t achieve even one of these five. Because for the last six months I’ve sometimes felt like the fat kid who no one wants on their team. Or if I have been invited on to the team, with most of the blokes I’ve met recently, I’ve wanted to run as far as possible in the opposite direction. It shouldn’t matter, but it does. It really does. Because from the age of about two, everyone knows it’s rubbish playing by yourself. It doesn’t work. It’s boring.

  But when you’re a kid you can always run inside and your mum will give you a hug and a biscuit and it’s all OK. And then suddenly, you’re a grown-up and there’s nowhere to run and you have to be stoic about it and go around like it doesn’t matter. And then you start to feel guilty for wanting someone you like to play with. And you start to want it more and more. And the more you want it, the more impossible it seems. You wander round Sainsbury’s with a basket, looking in awe at the people with trolleys. The people with teams that you’re not in and you think, Why me? What’s wrong with me?

  So occasionally you have a melt down and people like H say things like, ‘Don’t worry, it’ll happen when you’re not looking.’ Whoever said that first deserves to be put up against the wall and shot, because you do look. You look everywhere. You don’t see for looking.

  And then out of the blue, it happens. Just like that. You find togetherness. Like now, with Jack walking beside me falling in with my stride, with his arm around my shoulder. It seems like the most natural thing in the world. But how did it happen? It’s fantastic, but it’s so unfair too. All these months of angst and, look, it’s easy. Easy peasy. But if it came this quickly, this feeling of being in a team, surely it can disappear just as quickly.

  All of a sudden I want to freeze time. Freeze this moment, because I want everyone to see this. I want everyone to know that I’m much better being part of an ‘us’ than just plain old me. I want to jump up and down and shout, ‘Look everyone, I’m in a couple! I can do it too.’

  Jack stops by a surf shop. ‘Come on, let’s go jet skiing,’ he says, grabbing my hand.

  I don’t have time to argue before I’m dragged into the shop. As I watch him, I laugh to myself. Laugh at the fact that he has no idea what’s in my head and wouldn’t even come close to understanding. Because he’s a bloke and he simply doesn’t have these kind of thoughts. And he’s right not to. I’m so jealous of how his life is so uncomplicated. How marvellous it must be to have all that brain space to concentrate on the here and now. I’d get so much done if I didn’t spend so much time having existential angst. I’d have time to be impulsive like Jack is being now and my life would be fun all the time.

  I remember how it felt when someone taught me how to tie my laces properly for the first time. It was such a revelation. All of a sudden, it made perfect sense. There was no need to trip over any more. Watching Jack in the shop, I feel like that again, as if he’s shown me a way to be happy, and I feel like knocking my head and saying, ‘Durrr. Of course, it’s so obvious!’

  The girl in the shop warns me that my excuse for a bikini is too flimsy and it’ll be whipped off in a second. Instead she gives me a sticky rubber wet suit which doesn’t exactly flatter my child-bearing hips. Jack, of course, looks like James Bond on a mission and I feel a surge of jealousy when the woman behind the counter eyes him up and down.

  Oi you, hands off!

  In the water, Jack’s a natural. When I see the glint in his eye, I can tell he’s seeking revenge for my triumph in the car and burns through the water, slashing it into big waves which make me wobble.

  ‘Don’t be scared, just let go,’ he yells, and I pull on the throttle shooting off towards the horizon. It’s so exhilarating that I screech as the water splashes up in my face. He catches up with me and shows me how to turn, and in no time I’m a Baywatch Babe. Tee hee.

  I’m having such a laugh that the time goes in a flash. My throat is hoarse as I stagger up the beach and peel myself out of the wet suit.

  Jack puts his arm around me as I emerge from the back of the shop. ‘Fun?’ he asks.

  ‘Fantastic, but I’m starving now.’ I pat my stomach, astonished that my body paranoia has vanished.

  ‘Then I shall treat you,’ he says grandly.

  ‘Fish and chips?’

  ‘You
’re so English,’ he teases. ‘No, I think we can do better than that.’

  We stroll around the lanes and find a cheap and cheerful French restaurant with tables outside on the cobbles. Jack orders us a couple of beers.

  ‘To us,’ he toasts, and I clink his glass. The bubbles go up my nose.

  I’ve spent so much time wondering what he thinks about last night, but now I’ve got the opportunity to ask him, I let the moment pass. I realise that I’m much more interested in finding out what he thinks about everything else.

  ‘Do you like being an artist?’ I ask when the starters arrive.

  ‘I think so. It’s the only thing I know how to do well. And anyway, it gets me out of having a nine to five job.’

  ‘You’re so lucky,’ I sigh. ‘I wish I had something I was really good at.’

  ‘I can think of something,’ he grins.

  I blush. ‘Apart from that.’

  ‘You want success, you mean?’

  ‘I guess so. Doesn’t everyone?’

  ‘What did you want to do when you were a kid?’ he asks, breaking a bread roll and dipping it in his sauce.

  ‘Something to do with clothes, I think. Men’s clothes. I always preferred Ken to Barbie.’

  ‘You just wanted to get his trousers off.’

  I laugh. ‘True. Although Ken doesn’t have very exciting bits. No, I like men’s clothes. The first time I saw you, I noticed your clothes.’

  Jack looks up at me. ‘Why don’t you get into the fashion industry or something then?’

  I look at the asparagus spear on my plate. ‘I wanted to for ages, but I didn’t get anywhere. It’s far too competitive.’

  ‘You’ll never find out unless you try. There’s loads of talented people, but there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be one of them. If I thought about the competition, I’d have given up painting ages ago.’

  ‘I suppose.’

  ‘You’ve got nothing to lose. Anyway, you’ve got everything going for you.’

  He looks at me and smiles. I feel so relieved and so happy that without even thinking about it, I trust him. Completely. I haven’t talked about my career prospects to anyone apart from H and I feel like a big weight has lifted off me, just admitting my ambitions to him. I feel like I’m me again. Me with sub-stance and a shape to my future. Maybe I will give it a go.