PHOEBE
Abbey Baker looked as neat and perfectly groomed as she always had.
She has that Kate Middleton-type hair that no one really has in real life; long and bouncy and perfectly blow-dried. She was wearing an impossibly white cotton vest top with little purple strawberries embroidered on it, tucked into her jeans. Her white Converse didn’t have a single mark on them. Her nails were painted pale lilac to match the strawberries. She had hugged me like we had been mates at school. Not a cold, I-don’t-really-give-a-shit hug, but a warm, genuine one.
‘Phoebe, I want to know everything,’ she said. ‘It’s so rubbish being on a gap year. I keep seeing photos of people going out every night and I’m just sat with my mum and dad watching Countryfile.’ She laughed gently. Everything she did was sort of reserved.
I was trying so hard to keep smiling that it was difficult to concentrate on what she was saying. I felt like if I pretended it was just me and her in the room I might be able to get through.
I couldn’t look at Flora next to me, or over at Frankie and Negin. Flora was deliberately not looking at one corner of the room, so I knew that’s where Luke was. The nerves in my tummy were mostly because of Flora. Because she is an unknown quantity. She could say anything at any moment.
‘I love your trousers. We match.’ Abbey took a sip of her drink and smiled at Flora. ‘I want to be able to wear vintage stuff but I just don’t know where to start. You always look amazing. You need to give me some tips.’
Abbey was nice. I had never heard a bad word about her. She had always been in the popular group but she was one of the ones that everyone knew was actually OK. She was sweet to everyone. She ran homework club with Year Seven in the Sixth Form. She was the full package, really. Girlfriend material.
Flora looked down at her seventies flares, which were covered in psychedelic pineapples and strawberries. It wasn’t Abbey’s fault. I looked at Flora. She must feel it. That Abbey didn’t deserve to be hurt. That she hadn’t done anything. I willed her to be nice.
‘Strawberries are clearly the thing. Phoebs, here . . .’ Flora unpinned her strawberry brooch and leant over and jabbed it into my vest. It dug into me.
‘Ouch.’
‘Oops, sorry.’ She fastened it. ‘Strawberry crew.’
Abbey got out her phone. I smiled as she took the picture.
She showed it to us. I didn’t look like myself. Or maybe I did but I just felt so weird that nothing seemed normal. Flora was half smiling. A kind of non-committal smile. Like she didn’t want to give anything away one way or another. Abbey was doing a perfect off-duty model smile. Warm and accessible and polished.
I looked across the room by accident and saw Frankie and Negin. Frankie’s face looked different, too. She was usually so animated that I had never really stopped and realized that she was actually quite beautiful in a statuesque, almost old-fashioned way. When she wasn’t scoffing and gurning she looked like a woman from a Victorian painting. The kind of face people used to call handsome. She was expressionless almost. She looked grown-up.
‘I need the loo,’ I said, and didn’t look at Flora but just crossed the room. In my side gaze I thought I saw Luke’s shape but I made myself keep moving forward.
There was someone in the bathroom. I could hear footsteps behind me. Neither Frankie or Negin spoke. We just stood outside the toilet, all waiting together. Hot Quidditch Marco walked out carrying a pint of blue liquid. None of us said anything.
He smiled. ‘You look serious.’ The way his Italian accent said the word ‘serious’ would usually have made Frankie burst into an impression. But she didn’t. He held the blue drink out. We all shook our heads in a way that said ‘not now’.
We crammed in, and locked the door. You could tell boys lived here. It was functional with a grimy edge. I sat on the toilet and Frankie and Negin sat on the edge of the bath. None of us spoke. And the longer none of us said anything the harder it got to break the silence. I felt like it should be me. Like they were waiting for my cue. To see whether I was angry or sad or confused. They didn’t want to jump in any direction until I had.
‘I just . . . I don’t know . . . I hope Flora is OK.’ It was empty. Of course it was. Flora would be OK on Mars, psychedelic flares and all.
‘She’ll be fine. She knows her . . . kind of.’ Frankie was serious.
‘I don’t want her to feel like I’ve left her.’
Negin shook her head. ‘She won’t.’
‘I don’t want her to make anything . . . weird.’ This was closer to the truth. I couldn’t bear for her to make me endure some public scene.
‘I don’t think she’ll say anything to Abbey,’ Negin said gently. ‘If she was going to she would have done it by now.’
I nodded. I wasn’t going to cry. I wasn’t angry. I just wanted to evaporate. To not have to live through what was coming. There was a knock on the door. My stomach lurched intensely. It must be Luke.
‘You all right, ladies?’ It was Josh’s voice.
‘Phoebe isn’t very well,’ Frankie said to the door.
‘I’ll get you some water,’ he called back and we heard his feet thud down the stairs.
The silence continued until he knocked on the door again. Negin opened it and he handed her a pint of water. ‘Classic Bennet, peaking too early.’ None of us responded and he seemed to catch that something was going on. ‘Hope you’re OK.’ He leant over and touched me really gently on the shoulder and then left, shutting the door behind him.
‘Shall we just go?’ Frankie said. ‘There’s no point sitting in here for hours.’
‘I’ll go. Flora will come with me. You two should definitely stay. I mean, Ed might be coming . . . I don’t want you guys to . . .’
‘To be honest I think this evening is a bit cursed,’ Frankie said. ‘I don’t think I want tonight to be me and Ed’s night anyway. I think tomorrow will be a better day for . . . everything.’
I just needed to get from the bathroom to the front door. It was, like, fifteen steps. As soon as I was out I would be OK.
‘I don’t want to say goodbye to anyone,’ I said.
‘We’ll just say you are really ill.’ Negin put her arm around my shoulder. It was so unlike her that for a split second I felt tears prick. ‘Ten seconds and we’ll be out of here.’
‘I’ll go and tell Flora,’ Frankie said.
Negin held my hand as she unlocked the door. She squeezed it. We walked out. I could hear everyone in the living room and in the kitchen. A couple I had never seen before were getting off with each other in the hall.
‘My coat’s in the living room,’ I whispered to Negin.
She nodded. ‘OK, wait here, I’ll get it.’ She walked in just as Flora walked out. She was shaking her head like she was slightly pissed off. She looked up and saw me. She threw her arms around me. ‘Let’s get the fuck out of here.’
Negin came out holding my coat. I put it on and shuffled towards the front door. As we passed the living room I heard my name.
‘Phoebe?’ I looked up. It was Abbey. ‘Are you leaving?’ She looked so earnest.
I nodded. ‘I don’t feel very well.’
‘Luke!’ Abbey shouted. ‘Phoebe Bennet is leaving.’
Flora shook her head. ‘Fuck’s sake.’ She said it under her breath and Abbey’s face flickered momentarily.
Luke appeared beside Abbey. I made myself not look at him.
‘I don’t have my bag,’ I said to no one in particular.
‘I’ll get it.’ Abbey turned and went back into the living room.
‘Hope you feel better.’ Luke’s voice sounded tiny.
‘You’re a fucking arsehole,’ Flora said it plainly and clearly but low enough that only we could hear it.
‘Flora, please.’ I reached down for her hand but she shook it away from me.
‘No, Phoebs. Don’t try and make it better for him.’
‘Stop. I don’t want—’
‘Fine.’ She looked at Luke. ‘Go and enjoy the party, Luke. It’s Phoebe’s birthday after all, so it’s important we all really go for it.’ She handed him her glass of punch and smiled a huge fake smile. ‘Enjoy.’
Abbey was standing behind Luke holding my bag. She reached over and handed it to me. I knew she had heard. And I knew that she knew. She looked the same as she had twenty minutes ago, perfectly coiffed, but her face couldn’t hide it. She was broken. She looked at me and something in her eyes triggered something in me. I knew I was going to cry and that there was nothing I could do to stop it.
‘Thank you,’ I said, and put the bag over my shoulder.
‘Fuck. My stuff is in the bedroom.’ Flora turned and bounded upstairs. And I ran out of the door.
The cold felt so good. I ran to the top of the street and turned the corner. I was right in front of the city walls that me and Flora had touched only a few hours ago. It felt so weird. So much had changed. How could it all have changed so quickly?
I let myself start crying.
‘Phoebe.’ I turned around. Josh was there. I let him hold me. And then I was physically shaking.
It was weirdly violent. Like my whole body was part of it, these long convulsions that I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t breathe and I couldn’t control myself. It was so loud. Not tears, but huge gasping wails. Every time I tried to stop they sounded more strangled and desperate.
The force of his hold steadied me. I let him hold me so tight that all the sounds were buried in him. It went on and on until the gulps slowed to every ten seconds or so. He just held me and held me. Rocked me gently in a kind of rhythm that matched how I was crying until it was soothing. I didn’t want him to let me go. I couldn’t speak and he didn’t speak. I stepped away and the cold air hit me and I gulped an aftershock of a cry. Josh didn’t seem to need to say anything. It was like he would have stood next to me endlessly not needing any kind of explanation or movement. I opened my mouth to speak and breathed in but I didn’t know what I wanted to come out. I wiped my nose with my sleeve.
Finally, I said: ‘I feel sick.’ I didn’t know if I did. I didn’t even feel like I was connected to myself, like I was in my own body. I just said it because I felt like maybe it could be true.
He nodded. ‘Do you have a hair tie?’
I took mine off my wrist and he took it off me and tied my hair into a ponytail. ‘You’ll be fine now. Nothing worse than sick in hair. Just feel free to really chunder your guts out now if you need to.’
A rasped laugh came out of me. ‘OK. Thanks.’ I stared at the pavement. ‘What a shit birthday.’
‘Well . . .’ He took his rucksack off his back. ‘OK, Bennet, it hasn’t been ideal, I get that. I mean, I’m sure other birthdays have been better. But, you haven’t had my birthday present on other birthdays.’
He pulled out an extremely crumpled package with Thomas the Tank Engine wrapping paper.
I smiled weakly as he handed it to me and unwrapped it slowly. They were cookie cutters. A cupcake, a ladybird, a cactus and a train. I held them all cupped in my hands. ‘Thank you. I love them. Especially the train.’
He nodded. ‘I told you, I knew you were a train person.’
‘It’s really weird.’ I held it up and looked at him through the middle of the train outline. ‘I told Flora today, and I was going to tell you.’
‘Tell me what?’
‘I decided what I want to do with my twentieth year.’
‘Indeed, Miss Bennet?’ He picked the cactus up and looked at me through it. ‘Well, what is it then?’
‘I want to go travelling. Like round Europe. Inter-railing. You know –’ I held up the train – ‘on trains.’
We looked at each other through our cookie cutters.
‘Well,’ he said, casually looking to the side. ‘Are you going on your own, you know, just training it about on your own or—’
‘Well, I might ask some people, you know, I don’t know. I’ll have to see, if anyone . . . wants to come.’
He looped his arm through mine and pulled me in towards him. ‘Let’s get you home.’
But I didn’t want to go home. I wanted to be close to him. I pulled back and looked at him and took a step forward. And then I kissed him on the cheek, gently, near his mouth, and then moved across and kissed him again, closer this time. He cupped my face in his hands and made a sort of quiet, frustrated moan.
‘Phoebe . . .’ He took a step away and put his hands in his pockets. ‘Let’s get you home.’ He sounded upset. Almost angry. I had never seen him even vaguely angry before.
I could feel myself going red. I got my phone out and ordered a cab. He walked away a bit and stood with his back to me.
‘Phoebe—’
‘Don’t say anything. Like, please. I just can’t face any more tonight.’
‘Phoebe, I just . . . Listen. You know what I want in my twenty-first year?’
‘What?’ I almost shouted it.
‘To know that I will know you for the rest of my life. For forever.’
‘Yup.’ I shook my head as I said it and turned and started to walk up the road. ‘Whatever.’ I could hear his paces behind me. ‘Will you at least leave me to feel humiliated alone?’
His paces stopped. We had only walked about five metres. The cab slowed down and I got into it, keeping my eyes fixed on the floor.
‘Are you getting in?’ the driver asked, and Josh must have shaken his head because he shrugged and wound the window up.
He glanced in the mirror and it made me do the same. He had clearly assessed the situation in one bored flick of the eye: drunk student. My mascara had run all down my face and my eyes were still red and swollen. Neither of us spoke. I looked at my phone just in time to see I had seventeen messages before it died. So I just peered into the darkness and tried to block everything out.
Finally, we slowed to a stop. ‘Mind how you go, love. They’re never worth it.’
It made me smile. ‘That’s what my mum says. She says you shouldn’t trust anyone with a Y chromosome between the age of fourteen and thirty-seven.’
He nodded. ‘Sounds about right.’
I slammed the door shut and looked up at D Block. The kitchens were lit up but all the rooms were dark. I was glad no one was there to have to explain it all to. Music was still playing in the bar and I could see some people playing table football. It was sort of comforting to see life going on as normal.
And then I saw him.
He was standing alone at the bar, swaying ever so slightly from side to side, drinking a pint. It was the first time I had actually seen him since the football match. I didn’t want him to see me so I started to walk quickly, but I heard the doors swing open as I passed.
‘Phoebe,’ Will shouted.
I kept walking.
‘Phoebe.’
I stopped and turned to look at him. That confident swagger had completely disappeared. He just looked lost and a bit desperate.
‘Can I talk to you?’ he said. ‘There is something I just really, really need to say . . .’
LUKE
By the time I caught up to Abbey, she was almost halfway into town. But she wouldn’t even stop to look at me.
‘Abbey, please . . .’
She just carried on storming forward into the freezing night. ‘Please let me explain,’ I said. ‘I’m so sorry. I’m a fucking idiot.’
‘Fuck. You. Luke.’
‘Where are you going?’
‘Train station.’
‘Abbey, don’t be crazy. There won’t be another train back now.’
She spun round and looked me straight in the eyes. ‘Oh, OK, fine. So, what? Shall we just go back to the party, then?’
‘Well, no, obviously not, but—’
‘Why the fuck did you even take me in there?’ she hissed.
‘Because you wanted to go,’ I said, pathetically.
‘Yeah. That was before I knew the girl you’ve been secretly shagging would be there, too.’
I looked down at the pavement.
‘So you have?’ she said.
I looked back up at her but didn’t speak. She closed her eyes and nodded.
‘Right,’ she said, with her eyes still closed. ‘Did you know she would be there?’
‘Of course not,’ I muttered.
‘So, how long were you thinking you could keep this up?’
I almost laughed. ‘How long . . . Abbey, you’re talking like I’m some fucking criminal mastermind, or, like, serial playboy. It should be pretty obvious that I wasn’t thinking. About anything. It’s like I haven’t been thinking all term. I’ve just been . . . blindly moving forward, smashing into stuff as I go.’
Abbey was shaking her head, staring down at her feet. I kept going, feeling a strange lightness at finally telling the truth. ‘I’ve been trying to fit in and make friends, but everything keeps falling apart. It’s like, school was so . . . easy. With you and Reece and football and everything, it all just slotted into place. But here, it’s different. It’s like nothing fits properly.’ I exhaled, and watched my smoky breath mushroom out like a speech bubble above our heads. ‘This thing with Phoebe,’ I said, quietly. ‘It was the first thing here that seemed to fit.’
Abbey looked up at me, tears glinting in her eyes. ‘Why didn’t you tell me about her, Luke?’ she shouted. Like, literally, shouted. I saw a light go on in the house nearest us.
I shrugged. ‘Same reason you didn’t tell me about Marcus?’
She turned round again and started walking.
‘Abbey, I’m sorry.’
‘Fuck off.’
‘Seriously, please. There won’t be any trains now.’
‘I don’t care.’
‘And even if there are, it’ll be ridiculously expensive at the last minute.’
She stopped suddenly, and spun around furiously to face me. ‘I’VE GOT A YOUNG PERSON’S FUCKING RAILCARD, LUKE!’ she screamed.
It was so loud that two blokes in the chippy across the road popped their heads out.
I couldn’t help it. It was like something just snapped inside me.
‘Are you actually fucking laughing?’ Abbey whispered.
‘I’m sorry . . .’
‘You’re such a . . .’ But then she was laughing, too. Laughing and crying at the same time. Big gulping laughs sloshing into big groaning sobs.
We stood there for a few seconds like that; barking like mad seals, while the chip-shop blokes just stared at us.
Then she wiped her eyes with her sleeve and sat down on the wall of the house we were outside. ‘Oh, fucking hell, Luke.’ She took a deep breath and blew it back out. She sniffed and stared down at the pavement. ‘Phoebe Bennet,’ she said, blankly. ‘From school.’
I shook my head. ‘No . . . Well, yeah, but we’re not together, or anything . . . We sort of were, though. I don’t know what we are, really.’ I paused. ‘I’m so sorry, Abbs.’
She looked up at me, eyes glistening. ‘No, it’s all right, I suppose. I mean . . . we were broken up. We are broken up.’
‘Yeah, but still. I should have told you.’
She shrugged. ‘I should have told you about Marcus.’
‘Well, yeah. Fucking Reece told me about Marcus. Or, at least, he told me to check Instagram.’
‘Yeah. Sorry. I shouldn’t have put that picture up.’
‘Why did you?’
She opened her mouth to answer and then stopped. Then she suddenly burst out laughing again. ‘I wanted you to see it,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with me.’
‘It’s all right. I don’t know what’s wrong with me either. At least we’re confused together.’
She dried her eyes on her sleeve again, and took a couple more wobbly deep breaths.
‘Why did you come up, Abbey?’ I asked. ‘I mean, do you want us to get back together?’
‘No, I don’t think so,’ she sighed. ‘I don’t know what I want, really. I just wanted to see you. I’ve missed you.’
‘Yeah, I’ve missed you, too. Still, you’ve got old Marcus now, haven’t you . . .’
She snickered. ‘Marcus is a dick, Luke. His Instagram is like ninety per cent Latin proverbs.’
This made me lose it again: ‘I suspected he was a dick, but I didn’t want to say anything.’
When we’d both stopped laughing, she said: ‘But I guess he did make me feel better.’
‘Well, maybe he’s not a total dick, then.’
She looked at me. ‘Does Phoebe Bennet make you feel like that?’
‘Like what?’
‘Better?’
I didn’t really know the answer to that. To be quite honest, the idea that Phoebe would ever even want to be in the same room with me again seemed pretty unlikely, so it was hard to try and properly assess my feelings for her. But, still, I gave it a go.
‘I really like her, yeah. I like being with her.’ Abbey smiled sadly and nodded. I shifted closer to her along the wall. ‘I really want you to be OK, Abbs.’
‘I think I am now,’ she said softly. ‘But it’s weird, you know? Like, half my bedroom wall is pictures of me and you. And now . . . what am I supposed to do with them? Put them up in the attic and forget about them? Or just chuck them away? I don’t want that. I don’t want to forget that we ever happened.’
‘Me neither. But why do we have to? I wouldn’t ever change what we had. I was so happy with you. Maybe it’s the right thing that it’s over, but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t have happened. I’m glad it did.’
‘I’m glad too,’ she said, smiling. ‘But maybe we shouldn’t see each other for a bit, though. After tomorrow, I mean. It might be a good thing. It might mean that we can see each other in the long run.’
‘Yeah. I really, really want that.’
She reached into her bag and handed me an envelope. ‘Here. I forgot to give you this. Early Christmas card.’
I opened it. It had a picture of some golf clubs and a pint of beer on the front, and said: ‘TO A WONDERFUL STEP DAD ON FATHER’S DAY’.
‘Shit,’ I said. ‘That’s good. That’s really good.’
Inside the card she’d written: ‘Luke – whatever happens, you made me the happiest I’ve ever been.’
We walked back to Jutland arm in arm. Back in my room, I made tea and gave her the bed, even though she insisted it wouldn’t be weird if we both slept in it. But it really felt like we’d got past something tonight – something we never properly got past in the summer – and it seemed stupid to risk going back a step.
I laid out three pairs of jeans and a jacket on the floor beside her, and tried unsuccessfully to get comfy. I thought about Phoebe. About how our relationship – or whatever the hell it was – really had been the one thing here that had actually made me happy.
‘You sure you’re all right down there?’ Abbey murmured in the darkness.
‘Yeah, I’m all right. Night, Abbs.’
‘Night, Luke.’
And I really was all right.
At least, I was all right until about 4.30 a.m., when a piercing electronic scream burst down the corridor and zapped me awake.
‘Mmmph . . .’ Abbey sat up suddenly, her hair over her eyes. ‘Whassat?’
‘It’s the fire alarm,’ I groaned over the noise. ‘Come on, we’d best go down. It won’t be a drill at this time of night.’
I shrugged on my jacket and handed Abbey my old parka, and we wandered downstairs, where half of Jutland was already shivering outside in their coats and pyjama bottoms.
Arthur bumbled over, barefoot and wrapped in two zip-up hoodies, looking extremely worried. ‘Fuck, man, I think this was me, you know,’ he whispered. ‘I had a dream that I was making cheese on toast. Maybe I actually did make cheese on toast. Maybe I was sleep-toasting.’
‘You can’t sleep-toast, Arthur. It’s impossible. Also, for someone who smokes as much weed as you do, your dreams are surprisingly boring.’
He wasn’t listening. ‘If this turns out to be my fault, I’ll be out on my ear, man. I set the alarm off last year, too. Trying to light a spliff off Rita’s hair straighteners.’
I nodded across to D Block, which was also leaking pissed-off, half-asleep people. ‘I wouldn’t worry about it. They’re evacuating the other blocks, too. It was probably someone in there.’
Negin, Frankie and Flora were already outside the entrance, shivering together, wrapped in a duvet. They all turned at the same time to look at the main staircase, where Phoebe was shuffling down the steps, sheepishly.
With Will right behind her.