‘OK,’ she decided. ‘As we’re probably going to have to book a room at the Jeane Hilton, I’ll stop teasing. So, what did you think of the show?’
She knew what I thought of the show because I’d been watching from the side of the stage and jumping up and down and squealing all the way through the set. Basically, this was Michael’s real test. He was going to try and bluff his way through a review of the show and Molly and Jane would know, because people in bands have a sixth sense about that kind of thing, and it would reflect very badly on me. Normally I didn’t care what people thought of me but this was Jane and Molly, my two honorary badass older sisters, so actually I did care very much.
I held my breath as they both stared at Michael. I could almost hear the gears in his brain shifting.
‘Well, I didn’t get to see much of the show,’ he admitted, to my surprise. ‘You were about halfway through the opening number when I got dragged into a drama that lasted for the whole set and both encores.’ His shoulders slumped. ‘What I could hear over the crying and the shrieking sounded good, though. Really good. I mean, I love the CDs but bands always sound better live.’ Michael rubbed his chin. ‘Apart from Justin Bieber, he’s always going to sound shit, isn’t he?’
It was exactly the right thing to say and neither Molly nor Jane seemed to mind that Michael had missed witnessing them in all their splendour. Instead Jane called over their friend Kitty who looked just like Justin Bieber, then we talked to her and two hours passed in a blur of drinking and chatting and at one stage Michael even danced with me to old skool hip hop. It wasn’t any kind of dancing that could actually be defined as dancing but at least he tried. Barney and just about every other straight boy I knew would rather have an enema than be seen dancing.
At precisely two o’clock, the lights came on and I had to prise the soles of my shoes off the sticky floor and think about going home. Michael had barely touched me all evening, but once he’d pulled on his leather jacket, he took my hand and then he held it. My hand tucked into his like it belonged there. Again, totes bizarre, but kinda nice. My hands were cold but his were warm and I’d forgotten my gloves so it worked out very well.
It occurred to me that Michael and I had never been out on a Saturday night together because that was what regular couples did and whatever we were it certainly wasn’t regular.
‘Don’t take this the wrong way,’ I said, which showed that I was maybe a little bit tipsy because normally I wasn’t bothered if he did take things the wrong way, ‘but don’t you have a curfew? I mean, most people living with their parents do.’
Michael gave me a bit of eyebrow action at the suggestion that he was still completely parent-whipped, but I’d met his mother and she was a woman who’d have no patience with her beloved son arriving home at all hours.
‘Not so much on Saturday nights.’ Michael looked at his watch – he was the only person I knew who wore one. ‘Though if they weren’t in Devon, I think coming home at past two would really be pushing it.’
‘Even at the start of half-term?’
‘But, Jeane, it’s my crucial A-level year,’ he said in a highpitched voice that did sound a bit like Kathy Lee. ‘You need at least eight hours’ sleep every night and don’t forget to let the cat out.’
‘So, um, do you want to share a cab or come back to mine for a bit?’ I asked hesitantly, because I’d been so busy lately that we hadn’t had a chance to get together. And by get together I really meant kissing each other until breathing became an issue.
Michael squeezed my hand a little tighter. I squeezed him back. ‘I really do need to let the cat out, but you could come back to my house. It’s clean, for one thing …’
I stopped squeezing and scowled. ‘My place is clean. I spent hours this morning tidying up and I even vacuumed and did the recycling without Gustav and Harry coming round and standing over me.’
‘Yeah, but did your place have a supermarket delivery in the last twelve hours and a dad who went to Chinatown yesterday and came home with two boxes of cakes?’
‘Well, no,’ I admitted. ‘No, it didn’t.’
‘So, come back to mine. For cake and, y’know, whatever.’
It sounded like a plan. A plan whereby I’d stuff my face with cake, then get down to a whole lot of whatever. ‘Fine,’ I said, pulling him towards the exit. ‘Let’s try and find a cab.’
18
I couldn’t believe I was holding hands with Jeane in public, on a street corner, at nearly 2.30 in the morning, and that she was coming back to my house that was free of parents and annoying little sisters.
As Jeane peered up and down the road for a vacant black cab, the streetlight caught the angles in her face and she looked almost beautiful. Well, no, not beautiful, but exotic. Like she was a bird of paradise or a rare flower that didn’t belong on a damp, grey London street on a damp, grey London night.
‘Hey, take a picture, it lasts longer,’ she said when she caught me staring at her but she didn’t sound like she minded.
There were no cabs to be found and just as we were about to walk up to the main road, someone called Jeane’s name and we turned round to see Molly and Jane and a couple of randoms hurrying towards us.
‘So, we’re all right to sleep at yours then?’ Molly asked as she drew level and Jeane went from holding my hand to not holding my hand and stepping away from me. ‘You don’t mind?’
‘Of course I don’t,’ Jeane said and I didn’t know why I suddenly felt furious. Compared with coming back to mine for Chinese buns and a grope and grind session, hanging out with Molly Montgomery was always going to be the better deal. Always. ‘And before you start bitching, it’s beyond clean. My dad’s coming to London for a visit so I’ve been up to my elbows in hot soapy water for most of the day.’
‘I’m glad to hear that because last time I stayed at yours, I swear I got scabies,’ Jane said with a shudder.
Molly smacked her. ‘You great fat liar,’ she gasped. ‘You were allergic to that body lotion that smelt like Toilet Duck.’
‘I still say it was scabies,’ Jane insisted. ‘I hope you remembered to vacuum the sofa as well as the floor.’
‘Any more backchat and you can sleep in your van,’ Jeane said. ‘And I guess we can stop looking for a cab,’ she added to me.
I nodded. There wasn’t much else I could do. It wasn’t the end of the world that she was heading home with her cool friends and I was going back to an empty house on my own. Her kisses were pretty good but I could live without them.
Duckie’s van was parked in the next street. Jeane and I climbed into the back and I spent the next ten minutes with a drumstick poking me in the arse and having to cling to the wheel arch as Jane took the corners too fast. Even though Jeane had told me that she was a total straight-edge who didn’t drink or do drugs, Jane still drove like she was under the influence. When we reached the Broadway, Jeane started to give her directions to my place as she fished around in her tote bag.
I wasn’t paying much attention because … well, because I was sulking and I was cramped and uncomfortable and I was thinking about the bacon sandwich I was going to have when I got in, then Jeane pulled out her keys and tossed them to Molly. ‘You remember the address, don’t you?’
‘Yeah,’ Molly said. ‘It’s saved in my phone so I can use Google Maps to take us the rest of the way.’
Jeane leaned forward. ‘Just drop us off by that postbox,’ she said, as, with a terrible grinding of the gears, Jane pulled into the kerb. ‘Leave my keys under my doormat and I’ll buzz someone to let me in.’
There was a collective snort of disbelief. ‘Don’t be a twat,’ one of the other girls said. ‘Anybody could pick them up.’
‘Remind me to never ask you to join my Neighbourhood Watch scheme,’ Molly said. ‘Let’s meet for lunch tomorrow before we drive back to Brighton and we’ll have a ceremonial handing over of the keys.’
It took another five minutes to sort out the details of the lunch and
finally we were clambering out of the back of the van.
‘Help yourself to anything in the fridge, but if you finish all my Haribo I’ll kill you,’ Jeane called out before she slammed the van door shut. She turned to me with a satisfied smile. ‘Well, at least we saved on taxi fare.’
I was more relieved that she was walking up my drive than I would have thought possible. ‘You could have hung with them if you’d wanted,’ I said as I unlocked the front door.
‘But we’d already made plans,’ Jeane said, as if the plans had been carved into tablets of stone. ‘And besides, five people all wanting to use my bathroom at the same time? No, thanks!’
The house was cold and silent and I couldn’t quite believe that my mum wasn’t suddenly going to come flying down the stairs and berate me for breaking my lax Saturday night curfew and grounding me until my A-levels were over. But she was still in Devon so I made Jeane a cup of tea and it turned out that she fancied a bacon sandwich too.
She swung herself up on the worktop, still wearing her quilted gold jacket, which looked like it was made out of an old dressing gown, and watched as I cut slices from a loaf of sourdough bread and shoved them in the toaster, then heated oil in the frying pan.
‘When I was six I decided to become a vegetarian because I made the connection that Sunday roasts were actually cute little chickens and lambs and stuff,’ Jeane suddenly said. ‘My mum is so hippy dippy that she had to go along with it. Anyway, I was vegetarian for five whole days but on Saturday morning my dad always made bacon sandwiches and when he and my mum told me I couldn’t have one because bacon was meat and I was a vegetarian, I got so mad that I didn’t talk to them for two weeks.’ She gave this odd snuffly laugh and shook her head. ‘My mum thought I’d lost my voice until she realised I was still talking to my sister Bethan.’
‘God, when I was six, I was more interested in Pokémon than the environment,’ I said as I turned each rasher and jumped back as I was splashed with spitting fat. ‘We were living in Hong Kong then and you could get really cheap knock-off Pokémon stuff that my mum refused to buy because she was convinced they were made of toxic materials and had bits of metal and glass poking out of them. Apparently one time I lay down in the middle of the street and had a complete fit because she wouldn’t let me have a furry Pikachu.’
Jeane stretched out her legs and grinned. ‘What did your mum do?’
‘She stepped over me and carried on walking down the street.’ I could still remember the stickiness of the hot pavement under my fists and the smell of ginger and chillies and scallions from the noodle shop and that moment of defeat when I finally picked myself up and raced after my mother. ‘It’s very hard to get one over on my mum.’
‘Really? I find it very easy to get one over on mine,’ Jeane said, her voice as tart as lemon juice.
‘What about your dad?’ I asked tentatively. ‘You said you were going to see him later on in the week.’
Jeane pulled a terrible face; eyes screwed shut, mouth and nose disappearing into a painful pucker. ‘God, my parents are two of the least interesting things about me.’ She tore off sheets of kitchen roll as I turned out the light under the bacon. ‘I’d much rather hear about Hong Kong. How long did you live there?’
It was late and we were both tired and cold, so even though my mother would have had a fit if she’d known that I was taking a girl into my room and shutting the door, even worse that I had hot, smelly food in my room, we decamped to my attic bedroom. Jeane kicked off her shoes and curled up on my bed as she demolished her bacon sandwich like she hadn’t had a decent meal in weeks. In fact, knowing her preference for living on jelly sweets and coffee, she probably hadn’t. Then she sipped her tea as I told her about living in Hong Kong and our tiny apartment on Pok Fu Lam Road and how while my dad was working at Queen Mary Hospital and my mother at the Consulate, I was looked after by May, my Chinese nanny, who’d put chicken soup in my sippy cup and take me to the playground just down the street. I told her about the weekends when we’d go to Victoria Harbour to look at the boats and how there were so many skyscrapers that looking up made you dizzy. That English rain didn’t even begin to compare with the black rainstorms of a Hong Kong spring and that the humidity later on in the season felt as if you were being slowly stewed.
I told her about the flower market and the bird market and the market that just sold goldfish and how, as a special treat, my parents would take me to Tai Yuen Street, which had nothing but toy shops and stalls selling all kinds of brightly coloured, flashing, whirring, beeping toys and our holidays on Lamma Island and I thought Jeane was asleep as her eyes were shut and her limbs swathed in aquamarine shot silk and taffeta and bright pink tights were relaxed but when I stopped talking, her eyes snapped open. ‘Don’t stop,’ she said.
‘But there’s nothing much else to tell,’ I protested with a laugh.
‘It sounds amazing,’ Jeane sighed, and it wasn’t one of her world-weary, God-can-you-really-be-such-a-massive-tool? sighs. This sigh was full of wonder. ‘It’s definitely been added to my list of places I have to visit.’
I wanted to know what other countries were on her must-see list, but before I could ask her, a massive yawn that went on for a long, long, long moment overtook me and once I’d stopped, Jeane started yawning.
‘I’ll leave you to get some shut-eye, then, shall I?’ I started to scramble off the bed, but Jeane caught my hand.
‘Shut-eye? Are you, like, fifty?’ she asked mockingly. ‘Where are you going to sleep?’
‘I can sleep in the spare room.’ I pulled away from Jeane but she didn’t let go. ‘What?’
‘You could sleep in here, if you wanted,’ she said slowly.
My throat suddenly closed up. ‘With you?’ I croaked.
Jeane smiled. ‘Yeah, unless that would make your head explode?’
It did feel like my head was exploding a little bit, because the sight of Jeane lounging on my bed like a beached mermaid was mind-bending enough but the thought of Jeane in my bed, with me in my bed as well, possibly doing things that two people sharing a bed did, was making the parts of my brain that deal with logic and reason short-circuit.
‘Just to sleep or, er, not sleep?’ I clarified, because Jeane expected me to be all open about sex and establishing personal boundaries and—
‘Oh, for God’s sake, Michael, we’re both consenting adults.’
‘You’re not an adult, you’re only seventeen.’
‘In the eyes of the law, I’ve been legally able to have sex for fifteen months,’ Jeane informed me. ‘Even though I’m not legally able to vote, buy alcohol and I can’t stand for Parliament until I’m twenty-one, though I have way more sense than most of our elected representatives. Anyway I’m not talking about some non-stop shagathon, I’m talking about us sharing a bed and maybe moving things forward a little bit so we get off as well as getting off with each other.’ I hadn’t thought that Jeane knew how to blush but her face was as red as her lipstick, which even a doorstep of a bacon sandwich and a mug of tea hadn’t dislodged.
What she said made perfect sense. After all, our post-school make-out sessions usually ended with me going home to relieve some of the pressure with my left hand and a couple of adultorientated websites that I always cleared from my browser history two minutes after the deed was done. Yeah, it was Jeane who had got me into that state but the idea that Jeane could help me out of that state too hadn’t really dawned on me.
‘Are you sure that’s what you want?’
‘Well, I was pretty sure but your utter lack of enthusiasm is a real mood killer,’ she said. She flopped back on the bed with a sulky-sounding huff. ‘Let’s just go to sleep, shall we? It’s late and it won’t be long before we need to get up and go and meet Molly and the others, OK?’
‘If there was a world record in annoying someone, I think I’d have smashed right through it ’cause you’re always annoyed with me about something, aren’t you?’
‘Not always,’ Jea
ne conceded. ‘Lately there have been huge periods of time when you haven’t annoyed me at all. I think that’s called progress. Now we’ve cleared that up, can we have some shut-eye or whatever the completely old-timer expression was that you used? Forty winks. Up the stairs to Bedfordshire. Sleep, let’s do it.’
Nothing was ever that simple with Jeane. She insisted on seeing my entire T-shirt collection before she found one that she’d deign to wear and she took ages to clean her teeth and then I made her go and take her make-up off because I didn’t want to wake up with glitter, mascara and lipstick all over my pillowcase, and I didn’t think Mum would be too impressed either.
Once she had a glass of water and the radio set on a low volume and was on the left-hand side of the bed, because ‘I’m left-handed so of course I need to sleep on the left,’ I was finally allowed to turn off the light.
I wasn’t feeling even remotely like doing anything that would lead to mutual orgasms until Jeane rolled over.
‘There’s not much point in sharing a bed if we’re not going to cuddle,’ she announced, though I’d never in a million years thought that she’d be a snuggler. ‘You probably take hugging for granted. Like, if your little sisters want to hug you, you probably wriggle and complain, but I live on my own and I don’t get to have much in the way of hugs and you have very good arms, Michael.’
Oh God, now, if it was possible, I felt the least sexy I’d ever felt, as if Jeane had magicked away my dick and turned me into a gigantic teddy bear. And now I felt sorry for her too because she had Cuddle Deficiency Syndrome and generally feeling pity towards someone didn’t make me want to bust out my best moves. But I did have good arms (I did fifty press-ups every morning) and I could give her a hug.