Come Together Read online

  We stay and get pissed, watching people going by, and the afternoon dissolves into laughter. Later we stroll back down to the beach. It’s emptier and we find a quiet spot. I’m pissed in a heady way and I feel that there’s only me and Jack in the world. Jack skims pebbles across the waves towards the sinking sun and I watch as his body moves. I’m pathetically loved up.

  He turns to face me.

  ‘What shall we do now?’ I ask.

  ‘Do you want to go back?’

  ‘No. Do you?’

  He shakes his head.

  We look at each other nervously and laugh. He taps his lips. ‘I know somewhere we can stay. If you want to, that is.’

  And I do want. I’m all of a want.

  The man at the Casanova B&B treats Jack like an old friend. He throws him a key with a wink and a warning that breakfast is only served until 10.30 a.m. and leaves us to it.

  Our room is very British Home Stores, with a floral quilt and a fluffy rug. But it’s clean and there’s an assortment of tiny packets of biscuits by the Teasmaid. I put my bag down on a chair by the TV and peek round the net curtain on to the small garden at the back.

  It feels strange to be in this room with Jack. After the day we’ve had it seems illicit and grown up. We don’t touch each other.

  Jack goes into the bathroom and puts up the toilet seat. I can see his back as he takes a leak and, for some reason, I feel shocked. Now it’s such a sure thing that we’re going to sleep together, I feel nervous. Somehow it’ll mean more than last night at Jack’s house and I’m scared by how intimate this setting is. How together we are.

  Jack flushes the loo and stands in the doorway. I notice he’s put the seat down. Someone must have trained him well. I wonder who …

  ‘I feel grubby,’ he says.

  I wrinkle my nose and ruffle my hair which has gone all curly with the salt water. ‘So do I.’

  ‘Shower?’ he asks, and I nod.

  He gets in first and I can see him adjusting the temperature through the glass doors as I undress. When he opens the door, I climb in.

  I feel all geeky and awkward. It’s very bright and, standing naked opposite Jack, I feel hopelessly exposed. It feels like the first time we’ve really seen each other. I suppose it is. I want to cross my arms over my stomach and curl up in a ball.

  Jack looks at me. Really looks at me. All over, as if he’s taking in every pore of my skin, and I know I’m blushing.

  I try to grab him and kiss him, which would somehow be less intimate, but he pulls away and pushes me back. Without saying anything, staring right into my eyes, he takes a small tablet of soap and rubs it into a lather between his hands.

  You wouldn’t think that a pink plastic shower cubicle is particularly erotic, but right now it’s up there in my list of all-time fantasy moments. Because Jack starts to wash me, turning me into a quivering mass of lather. As he strokes me, he pays such close attention to my body that it’s almost as if he’s drawing me. I can feel myself sliding against him, both of us enveloped in a cloud of steam. And I feel … WOMAN.

  Wet woman.

  Wicked woman.

  I’m shaking all over before he crouches down and hooks one of my legs over his shoulder. He buries his head between my legs and I’m a goner. Everything is slipping, his hands over my body, my back down the wall, and my senses into the most awesome orgasm I’ve ever had.

  Afterwards, it takes me ages to get my breath back and I kind of go all shaky. We still haven’t spoken. I look at him through the steam.

  It’s my turn.

  I sink down and he grips my hair as my tongue does all the talking.

  ‘Amy?’ he rasps after a while.

  ‘Mmmmmmm?’ I say. I can’t say much else, I’ve got my mouth full. ‘You’re kneeling on the plug hole.’

  We mop up the flood with most of the towels and lie on the bed to dry off naturally. Jack traces the tan line of my bikini top on my breast.

  ‘You’ve caught the sun,’ he says.

  And I have. I feel warmed to the bones. We look into each other’s eyes and I know then that we’re going to make love. And the thing that really gets to me is that Jack reads my mind because he says, ‘All night, all night and all tomorrow until you won’t be able to walk.’

  And he’s as good as his word.

  By the time we get back to Jack’s on Sunday, I’m feeling knackered in only the way that too much sex, sun, sea and booze can make you feel.

  ‘Happy?’ he asks, as he unlocks the door. We’ve been playing around on the beach all day and the sun has made his freckles come out. He looks gorgeous. I reach out and stroke his cheek.

  ‘Maybe,’ I smile.

  ‘Only maybe? What does a bloke have to do?’ He pretends to be outraged and picks me up, carrying me around the waist and walking with me to the kitchen. I’m giggling so much that I don’t notice Chloe and Matt sitting on cushions on the living room floor.

  ‘Well, well, look at this. It’s love’s young dream,’ laughs Chloe.

  Jack stops tickling me and springs away. I push my hair behind my ear, my laughter dying at the sight of Chloe. She’s sprawled out as if she lives here with a bottle of beer in her hand. She looks sickeningly thin, her perfect legs careering out of her short sundress.

  ‘Hi guys,’ says Jack, brushing past me. He crouches down and kisses Chloe on the cheek.

  ‘Help yourself,’ says Matt, gesturing to some beers on the table. ‘Where’ve you been?’

  ‘Brighton,’ I reply.

  ‘Look at your nose!’ Chloe wails at me. ‘You poor thing.’

  Jack laughs and hands me a beer. It’s not funny. It’s not my fault I look like Rudolf. I pull a face at him, but he seems distant and he doesn’t defend me.

  ‘So?’ asks Chloe. ‘Tell all?’

  ‘We had a great time, jet skiing, the works,’ says Jack, leaning back against the sofa and opening his beer.

  ‘And you stayed over! Where’s that shag haunt of yours, Jack?’ teases Chloe. She clicks her fingers, looking at me. ‘Don’t tell me, don’t tell me … the Casanova. That’s it, isn’t it? I hope you got a discount rate.’

  ‘Shut up, Chloe,’ he says, but he’s laughing, revelling in being Jack the Casanova, and it all makes sense for a moment. I’m just another conquest to him. He’s done all this before and I’m not the first. Who else has he moved the earth for in the pink plastic shower cubicle? The floor seems to sink from under my feet.

  ‘Sit down, sit down,’ says Matt, waving his bottle at the cushions, but I don’t want to go anywhere near Chloe in case I accidentally stab her.

  ‘Oh, Helen called me last night,’ says Chloe, casually swigging her beer.

  Warning siren. Why would H call Chloe?

  ‘She was looking for you.’

  ‘Shit.’

  ‘Don’t worry, I told her you were probably with lover-boy here.’

  ‘Was she all right? What did she say?’

  ‘Nothing much. Sounded a bit upset.’

  ‘Can I use your phone?’ I ask Jack.

  ‘Sure, use the one in my room.’

  I feel sick with worry as I leave them all laughing in the kitchen.

  ‘H, it’s me. Come on, come on, pick up,’ I urge her answering machine.

  There’s a click. ‘So you’re back then,’ she says curtly. She sounds really pissed off.

  ‘I’ve been to Brighton.’

  ‘Bully for you.’

  This is horrible. She never takes this tone with me. I grip the phone. ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘I’m sure it’s of no concern to you,’ she spits, but her voice is shaking and she’s making me feel frightened.

  ‘Tell me,’ I urge.

  She lets out a suppressed sob. ‘Leave me alone.’

  The phone goes dead. I listen to the tone utterly gobsmacked. She’s never put the phone down on me before, but then it’s no surprise that she’s pissed off. If I was her I’d hate me. We had plans for Saturday night whi
ch I blew out and I didn’t call her all weekend and I’m guilty. Guilty of being a selfish cow, guilty of doing what I always promised I’d never do when it came to a bloke. And now she’s having a crisis and I’ve deserted her in her hour of need. The thought of losing her fills my stomach with dread.

  ‘Is everything okay?’ asks Jack from the doorway. He walks across to me and puts a hand on my shoulder.

  ‘Something’s up, I’ve got to go and see her. You don’t mind do you?’

  ‘No, go ahead, it’s no problem.’

  I hate him for sounding so genuine. I wish he did mind, wish that he cared that our blissful weekend has fizzled out, but one look at him and I know that he’s not going to. He’s with his gang now and I don’t count.

  We have a public goodbye in front of Matt and Chloe, during which Jack treats me like he’s seeing off his maiden aunt. I scan his face, but the Jack I’ve spent the weekend with has retreated into his fortress. The more I look at him, the more defensive he gets and he barely kisses me.

  ‘See you then,’ he says.

  See me when? Tomorrow? In a week? In a month? In a year? Ever Again?

  ‘I had a good time,’ he concedes, but it sounds way too past tense to me.

  ‘I hope Helen is okay,’ says Chloe, joining Jack by the front door. Her voice is full of sympathy, but I’m not buying it for a second, especially when she wraps her arms around Jack’s waist and gives him a hug. Anyone else would see it as a friendly gesture, but when she removes her hand from Jack’s chest, I can almost see the brand she’s left there: ‘Private Property. Keep out’. I stumble backwards on to the street and before I’m out of sight, she’s laughing and moving back inside the house with him. I look at the closed front door in disbelief.

  My heart is thumping as I peg it over to H’s on the tube and I’m nervous as I follow her into her darkened lounge. If there were smoking Olympics, H would have won gold, silver and bronze medals all by herself. She’s surrounded by the debris of misery and she’s listening to Leonard Cohen. It’s a very bad sign.

  At first she tries to keep up her pretence of being angry, but she can’t and crumples back into the H-shaped dent in the bean bag. As I suspected, it’s Gav.

  ‘I’ve really fucked up,’ she sobs.

  ‘Shhh,’ I soothe, kneeling down beside her. ‘No you haven’t.’

  When I get her to calm down, she tearfully explains the latest trauma.

  ‘We were lying in bed and I asked him if he wanted to get married. It was just a hypothetical question, I wasn’t proposing or anything, but he went all strange. He said that he’d never get married unless he was going to have kids. So I said, well when do you want to have kids, and he said not for ages, maybe another ten years, there were things he wanted to do with his life.’

  It sounds fair enough to me; a typical Gav reaction.

  ‘But then it all got out of hand. I said that ten years sounded like a long time and where did that leave us, but he got the hump and said that he thought I was pressuring him and why couldn’t we just have fun, but I said, what’s the point?’ She takes a deep, shuddery breath and her chin trembles. ‘And what is the point? What’s the point in being involved, of loving someone if all the time you know that they’re going to piss off with someone else and not want babies until your ovaries have shrivelled into dried peas?’

  I laugh and dry her tears with the last piece of loo roll. ‘You can’t predict the future, babe. You can’t know for sure what either of you are going to be doing.’

  ‘I know that now with Gav,’ she chokes. ‘It’s going nowhere.’

  ‘That’s not true. It was going fine until you had this silly argument. You’ve got everything going for you both and you have a great time together. Why can’t you just let it be?’

  ‘You don’t understand. Don’t give me all that living for the moment crap, I’m not a fucking Zen Buddhist and neither are you,’ she snaps.

  She’s not going to listen to reason. She’s being stubborn, her true Capricorn colours showing through. The only way forward is to chivvy her out of it. Thank God I’ve got a Ph.D. in H Management Technique. I sigh and stand up.

  ‘Okay, okay,’ I surrender. ‘Be a stubborn miserable old bag then. Don’t get involved with anyone, just in case they don’t turn out to be Mr Right. I know, I know, I know, I’ve got it! What you could do is print up a questionnaire and get every bloke you fancy to fill it in giving his personal guarantee that he’ll put his life on hold whilst you make your mind up what you want, because that’ll really work.’

  There’s a smile playing on H’s lips despite herself.

  ‘Or perhaps you could just shackle Gav down. Chain him to the kitchen table and whip him until he proposes to you. Is that what you want? Are you absolutely positive that he’s the one for you, for ever and ever until the end of time?’

  ‘No,’ she admits.

  ‘Well then.’

  ‘But I do love him and I do want it to work out.’

  ‘And when did he say that he didn’t want that too? H, you’re being ridiculous.’

  ‘It’s too late now. He’s gone.’

  ‘Yes, back to his house probably.’ I roll my eyes at her. ‘He hasn’t dropped off the end of the world. You’ll probably be laughing about this tomorrow.’

  She cheers up and we have a big hug.

  ‘The worst thing was not being able to get hold of you,’ she says. ‘I was really worried.’

  ‘I know, I know, I got carried away, I’m sorry.’

  She asks me all about the weekend in Brighton and I tell her.

  ‘So what’s wrong? Why the glum face?’

  ‘I don’t know. I had a great time, but now I feel all jangled by Chloe. She was such a bitch.’

  ‘Maybe she’s right to warn you.’

  I’m immediately suspicious. ‘Why? What did she say?’

  H sighs and pulls an it’s-too-bad kind of face. ‘Nothing much. I don’t want you getting hurt, that’s all. Chloe knows Jack pretty well. She says that he’s a real womaniser and the whole prospect of a relationship would make him run a mile.’

  ‘So what are you saying? You’re believing Chloe now are you?’

  ‘No,’ corrects H. ‘All I’m saying is that you shouldn’t get your hopes up.’

  ‘So that’s it then is it? It’s not going to work. Well I’m glad everyone has decided for me and saved me the trouble.’

  H tuts and forces me to sit down. ‘Who knows. Only you know what feels right. You’ll just have to see how it goes.’

  And she’s right of course, but I hate it when she gives me back my own advice. It’s so hard to take.

  Back at my flat, I lie on my stomach on the sofa and stare at the carpet. My head is truly in a mess. Before my date with Jack on Friday, I was so sussed. I thought I had my strategy all worked out. I was going to be cool and take things slowly and I definitely wasn’t going to sleep with him. OK, so I’ll admit it, I bought new underwear – even suspenders (fucking uncomfortable) – and splashed out on new make-up, perfume and a dress on the never never, but I still had no intention of blowing it. I just wanted him to want me to the point where it lasted, to the point where he realised that I was someone he could have a relationship with.

  And now I’ve ruined it. All before it’s started.

  But then I remember Brighton and the memories seem so fresh that they sting my eyelids. Was it only this morning that I was curled up so tightly with him? How could it not mean anything to him? How can he dismiss it so quickly? How can he treat me like a quick shag he was throwing out after that?

  I run a bath, but it’s no comfort. I’m cold and sunburnt and deserted and even when I wrap myself in clean towels, the feeling of desolation doesn’t go away. There’s no point in staring at the phone, I know he’s not going to ring. Why should he? He’s got Chloe to amuse him.

  I douse myself in moisturiser, but despite the fact that I’m so tired, sleep is elusive. I fold my arms over the edge of the duve
t and stare at the ceiling and the weekend is running through my head like a set of photographs. In every one I’m over exposed.

  So much for my great expectations. I’ve had it all and lost it all in a day. In years to come, when I’m sitting in my flat like Miss Haversham, covered in cobwebs, people will say, ‘Ah yes, poor thing, she was happy that one June day, but that was her lot.’

  And even though Jack hasn’t died, he might as well be on the moon. I’m torturing myself with what he’s saying right now:

  ‘Amy, she’s a good lay. We had a laugh, but there’s plenty more where that came from. Onwards and upwards.’

  ‘Why should I see her again? My friends are more important and I want to be young, free and single. What’s the point of being tied down?’

  This is intolerable. I can’t stay in bed with his voice in the room and I drag my bones into the kitchen to make a hot chocolate. I sniff the milk. It’ll do. It’s only when I close the fridge that I notice that my kids’ magnetic letters have been moved. And there it is, in pink, green and orange:

  I push my face against the white door and smile, because the message can only be from Jack. Whilst I’m standing here, waiting for the milk to boil, I don’t feel quite so bad.

  5

  Jack

  New Dawn

  MY MORNING BEGINS with a riddle:

  Question: What smells like cheese, tastes like cheese, but isn’t cheese?

  Answer: Matt’s foot.

  Now, Matt’s a nice guy. Correction: Matt’s the best guy. We’ve been through a lot together: from childhood piano lessons in Bristol with the untamed, child-hating shrew, Miss Hopkins, to puberty and our first purchase of dirty magazines and cheap cider, to our current preoccupation with masquerading as mature, responsible members of society in London. And I can say without doubt that there aren’t many sacrifices I wouldn’t be happy to make in his interest. If I only had one cigarette left in my pack and we were miles from any shop, I’d share it with him. If he fell overboard in a storm, I’d dive in after him. If he needed a kidney, I’d give him one of mine. And, if pressed, I would give him my last Rolo. But even the very best of friendships only goes so far. And waking up to find the sweaty big toe of his left foot wedged firmly against my teeth is, quite frankly, too far.