I needed to do in the remaining two weeks. I got out my pad and pen and stared at the blank page. I didn’t like blank pages. They looked uncertain, open, ambiguous. I started to write, to cure the page of its emptiness, to cure the future of its uncertainty.
• Read through AS curriculums.
• File away GCSE work.
• Tidy desk drawers.
• Keep dream diary.
• Buy Screamhead’s new album.
• Mend puncture on bike.
• Collect photographs.
• Get a new boyfriend.
• Lose a stone.
• Phone Scarlet.
I decided to start at the end and work backwards. Maybe life should be like that. Start off as a crinkly with all that experience. Then feel yourself getting younger and fitter. Life would get better, not worse.
‘Hi, Scarlet. Do you want to come over or shall we meet in town or something?’
Mum came into my room.
‘Only two weeks left of the holiday. It’s flown past, hasn’t it? Eliza’s round at Katie’s for the day. I thought you and I would hit the shops.’
‘I’m going out.’
‘Oh. Right. Where are you off to?’
‘Just out.’
‘Are you meeting Scarlet?’
‘Probably.’
‘Well, maybe we could meet up afterwards. I’ve got a few things to do in town. What do you say?’
But I said nothing. I don’t know why. The wedding seemed to have changed everything. Maybe that’s why I keep thinking back to that day. Even now. It was the start of something. Or the end of something. It was an unhappy day, I know that. It’s just been so hard to recall the feelings, the essence, of the day. All I really remember is the sequence of events, like it was a film or something.
I met Scarlet at Tramps coffee-bar. I had a black coffee. Scarlet had a latte. She spooned three sugars into it, automatically, and stirred it round and round and round. Her arm jangled with the rows of bracelets. The dolphin tattoo on her shoulder bobbed up and down. She put her elbow on the table and propped her head up with her hand. She carried on stirring.
Tramps had an uneven wooden floor and thick pine tables which wobbled when you leant on them. The hiss and splutter of the coffee-machines, the droning chatter of its young customers, the revs and buzz of the traffic outside drowned out our silence. The place smelt of froth and coffee beans and sweat and cinnamon.
‘Life is full of shit,’ sighed Scarlet eventually.
‘Something wrong?’
‘My parents are splitting up—no big surprise—and Blaise has dumped me and I think I’ve picked the wrong subjects for AS levels. It’s all happening at once and I feel like shite. I am so-o-o-o stressed.’
Scarlet started to cry. Large solitary tears like a tap dripping slowly. She cried easily, unashamedly, as if it was normal.
‘Look at me.’ She laughed, and brushed her tears away with the back of her hand.
‘Do you want to talk about it?’ I asked, and put my hand on her shoulder. Then we hugged. Scarlet was the only person I touched, except perhaps Mum. Mum doesn’t know how to hug me any more. Except sometimes when she forgets I’m grown up. Am I grown up? Anyway, she hugs me like I’m three or something. Like she wants to kiss it better and put a plaster on it. Scarlet’s my best friend and her secrets are my secrets. And my secrets…Well, you have to know what they are yourself first. We hugged in the café so I could share some of my strength. If only I’d had any.
‘Not much to say really,’ she said.
But there was. Scarlet told me her dad was moving thirty miles away and that she had known it was coming but it was still a shock when it happened. That she’d racked her brains to see if there was anything she could have done. That Blaise was a bastard and she hated him. That she thought sciences would be too hard and would make her so-o-o stressed but she might stick with biology. That she felt uncertain and confused and muddled and shitty.
And all the time she cried and sniffed. She blew her nose on her napkin. She didn’t hide her face or go to the toilets. She seemed locked into that space, that time, that moment. The bustle of coffee-bar life ground on, but Scarlet seemed totally unaffected by everything around us.
Eventually she shrugged it off.
‘How was the wedding?’ she asked. ‘Any fit guys?’
‘Mostly mingers. But there was one cute guy, Ben.’
‘Tell me more.’
I leant over the table like there was someone listening or something.
‘He’s a Screamhead freak. We had so-o-o much in common. It was like we’d known each other years. I reckon he works out some. Muscles all over.’
I was whispering. Confiding in Scarlet. Confiding a lie, half a lie anyway.
‘All over?’ said Scarlet, and spluttered out a laugh so that the froth on her coffee went up her nose and made her cough.
We giggled and I nearly felt happy. I had made Scarlet laugh and that would make her feel better. Perhaps it would make me feel better. By osmosis or something.
‘Are you seeing him again?’
‘Might do. Bit of a distance.’
‘Still, you had a good time.’
Did I? Did I have a good time? I wasn’t well, there was something sad about it all, but otherwise…
‘So we’ve both got divorced oldies now,’ I said. I was sure I could help Scarlet out. That would make sense. I could tell her what it was like and then she’d understand and feel OK about it. Maybe.
I looked at Scarlet. How did she manage to cry without get-ting blotches? Her skin was perfect. Pale under her spiky blonde hair. She looked like a pretty pixie. Petite, small slightly turned-up nose, sparkling green eyes. I preferred long hair, but the style suited her. She made me feel clumsy. She said she wished she was tall. But she meant tall and elegant. Not tall and awkward. I liked my shoulder-length hair. I liked my brown eyes. I only got the occasional spot. But my body was all wrong. It was like a puzzle of different body parts all put together wrongly so that somebody else had some of my pieces. I had haphazard bulges here and there. In the wrong places.
We finished our drinks and Scarlet came to the music shop with me and to collect my photographs from Boots. While we were there, we fiddled around with the make-up samples. We sprayed perfume on our wrists and we weighed ourselves.
I got home with my photos and my CD and a number
