Me, You and Tiramisu

This client seemed to fill the doorway; his broad shoulders were slightly stooped, yet still blocked out whatever remnants of daylight were left in the reddening sky behind him. Crystal had been characteristically effusive in her welcome. The social niceties and wide smile that only made their appearance when in the company of vulnerable people with cash were flaunted with abandon.

This time was different, though. The girls had almost walked straight past the man’s smart navy Volvo that was incongruent with the potholed driveway and forlorn wasteland of a front garden. As Jayne drew level with the driver’s window she had glanced in and seen a teenage boy sitting low in the seat, shoulders hunched, his dark lanky hair obscuring his eyes. She’d tapped on the window, but he didn’t respond. She’d knocked harder, hurting her knuckles, until he’d slowly raised his head, his eyes tired and lifeless.

He’d reluctantly leant across and wound down the window an inch. Rachel had nudged Jayne to move on, to see the inch as a deterrent, not an invitation; his whole demeanour had suggested that he just wanted to be left alone with his dark thoughts, a concept alien to Jayne, yet one that Rachel recognised and understood.

He’d answered her questions with expressionless shrugs and turned down the invite to join them on their walk into town with an almost imperceptible shake of the head. So Jayne had no choice but to open the back door of the car and climb in. Which is where she spent the next half an hour. Talking to the back of his head.

She’d once tamed a baby badger by leaving milk and bread out every night, crouching still in the shadow of their dustbin until it gradually relented, delaying its retreat back behind the shed by a few more seconds every day. Cracking Billy was slightly harder, but even he had a breaking point. A few days later when his dad had booked a repeat reading, Billy eventually surrendered and agreed to join them on their early-evening walk into town.

‘You go, Jayne,’ Rachel had nudged her in the back towards the off-licence door.

‘No! Why? You go!’

‘I can’t, that’s the bloke that knew my ID was fake last time.’ The sisters had then both turned and looked at Billy, their looks of expectation fading as they realised that he barely looked all of his fifteen years, let alone three years older. ‘Billy, tell Jayne to get the cider,’ Rachel had ordered.

‘Um, Jayne, I think you should get the booze, you look really old.’

‘Gee, thanks Bill, way to win new friends.’

‘Um, I, er, just meant that with your, you know, natural assets …’ He’d broken off to mime two mountains jutting out from his chest, ‘and your height, you’re the best choice.’

‘Well, thank you for the impromptu game of charades just there, but I’m actually the same height as Rachel.’

‘Yeah,’ Rachel had interrupted, ‘but your hair adds about five inches. For the love of all that’s holy Jayne, get the frickin’ booze, and remember, 11th October 1982, 1982, 1982.’

Having confidently secured the contraband the three teens had headed to the park to drink their stash, lament their luck in being allocated such crap parental role models and to lie back on the grass and gaze up at the light pollution. As the days had turned into weeks, and aided by cheap strong cider, they had graduated from grunts to words, from vague teasing chat to whispered, confiding thoughts – the type that only teenagers have the right to voice out loud.

They were an unlikely threesome back then. Jayne with her jolly optimism and round John Lennon-in-the-Yoko phase glasses; Rachel with her morose moodiness, clad in the current season’s must-haves – a walking oxymoron if ever there was one. And Billy. He had been one of those boys whose width hadn’t yet expanded in line with his height. He was already over six feet tall, but his body had looked as if it had been stretched. His jeans were perpetually falling down, not through any desire to be a frontrunner in the fashion stakes, purely through the lack of any discernible body shape. He wore glasses too, but his were thick-rimmed like Buddy Holly, and his hair flicked over his collar, due entirely to the fact that the person who used to drag him to the barbers was no longer around.

He’d been a helpless bystander to his mother’s swift decline. In the space of three months his home had gone to one filled with tantalising odours of dinner and the sound of Italian folk songs from his mother’s native Sicily, to one where only whispering was permitted and the only fragrance was disinfectant and disease. The doctor had said that cancer doesn’t have a smell, but Billy said it did. Before she’d passed away his mum had written him lots of little notes, each one clearly labelled in her neat handwriting, which had started to show signs of shakiness.

For every milestone in his life there was a corresponding envelope and in a fit of grief after returning from the crematorium he’d ripped open all the ones right up until his fortieth. He’d barricaded himself in his bedroom, away from the black-clad relations eating heat-direct-from-the-freezer sausage rolls and the unrelenting sound of their disrespectful chatter. He’d kept hearing little flashes of laughter rise up the stairs, which had made him so angry he’d punched a hole in the partition wall, so he’d moved his poster of Faye from Steps over it so his dad wouldn’t see and try to talk to him about his feelings.

He’d been lying on his back when he’d told Jayne and Rachel this, deliberately looking up at the cloudless sky and not at them so they wouldn’t see a small tear slowly run down his cheek and pool in his ear. But Jayne did.

It was edging towards the end of the summer and the three of them had shunned their usual spot in the park for a little cove between Torquay and Paignton that only the Devonshire locals knew about. They’d bought some crisps and sweet dessert wine that they were drinking from the only plastic cups that the Co-op had in stock,ironically, considering the turn the conversation had taken, with colourful party balloons on them.

Billy had flipped over then so he could see them better. In doing so he had given Jayne a tantalising glimpse of his taut stomach, tanned from a summer mainly wearing just board shorts. Her pulse had quickened, although she hadn’t at the time realised why.

‘Now here’s a question,’ he’d said, ‘Why do you both call your mum Crystal and not Mum?’

Jayne quickly glanced at Rachel to see which one of them was going to respond first. The answer would be the same regardless of which sister spoke, but Jayne knew her version would be less peppered with expletives. Rachel’s eyes were cast down, concentrating on her finger tracing patterns in the sand. ‘Ironically, her name is actually Catherine,’ Jayne said. ‘But she changed it to Crystal when she was a teenager. Catherine the Clairvoyant doesn’t really have the same ring to it, does it?’ Jayne paused. ‘But when we were really young, we were on this beach actually–’

‘On the rare occasion she took us anywhere,’ Rachel had interjected.

‘Yes, on the handful of times we were allowed out of the cellar – Jesus, Rach, it wasn’t that bad! Anyway, we were here, about six or seven years old and there was this bloke she fancied–’

‘Sensing a pattern yet, Billy?’ added Rachel, picking up clumps of sand and letting the small grains cascade gently between her fingers.

Jayne carried on, ‘and one of us shouted ‘Mum’, and she went ape and said that from then on we had to call her Crystal and to say that she was our sister, and our real parents had died in a fire.’

‘Jesus.’ Jayne still remembered how Billy’s eyes had grown wide with disbelief and how the cloak of pity that he’d worn around him ever since they’d known him then extended to include his two new friends too.

That summer was one of Jayne’s favourite memories of adolescence. Actually, if she was completely honest, it was her favourite hands-down. She didn’t have many happy recollections to choose from, so you could argue that it was all relative, but even taking that into the equation, the summer they had met Billy was a game-changer. She and Rachel had always avoided any outside interference from anyone else; they’d never explicitly talked about why they didn’t try to integrate themselves with anyone else at school, or on their road, but they both knew why. Crystal’s inability to relate to children was even more pronounced, if that was possible, if she didn’t share some DNA with them.

Billy’s detour into their lives was a timely reminder that there was life outside of their twindom. But as the cooler evenings started to seep in, Billy’s dad was offered a job with his brother’s brick-laying business in Slough.

Billy had ridden around on his bike the morning of the big move, despite them having said goodbye the evening before. ‘I got this for you,’ he’d mumbled, blushing. He’d held out a red and green friendship bracelet. ‘I thought you might like it. Or not. You don’t have to wear it. Bye.’ He’d turned to go, swinging one leg over his battered BMX.

‘Wait!’ She’d shouted, ‘Um, thanks Bill, it’s really nice. I um, actually got you a book – it’s only second-hand, but you once said that you liked Terry Pratchett and this is his new one. Wait here.’ Jayne had run upstairs to get it from underneath her bed. It had been there for nearly three weeks, still wrapped in the rough, recycled paper bag it came in. She hadn’t known how to cross over into the realm of present-giving-for-no-reason without it seeming odd, so she had carefully stowed it until she had figured out a way to give it to him without simultaneously combusting in mortified embarrassment. She’d bounded back down the stairs, flushed. ‘Here,’ she’d said, thrusting it into his hands.

‘Thanks, Jayne, this is great. I’ll start it in the car now. Um, say bye to Rachel too, and, um, well. Bye.’

He’d looked as though he was going to start peddling and then thought better of it; then he’d quickly leaned over and crushed his mouth onto hers. His tongue had darted frantically into her mouth, then out again, and then he was off, wobbling furiously down the cul-de-sac.

**

They’d suddenly stopped walking and were standing outside a restaurant. Jayne didn’t need to look at its name or see the menu to know that it was Italian. Rows of Chianti bottles with wicker bases and eruptions of hard candle wax lined the windows, and you could glimpse the ubiquitous red-and-white-checked tablecloths beyond. Jayne tuned back into what Billy, Will, and Rachel were discussing. It seemed as though they’d decided that a celebratory drink deserved an upgrade to dinner.

‘This suit?’ asked Will, gesturing to the restaurant. In that moment he could have bought a can of dog food and three plastic spoons and she’d have nodded just as eagerly as she found herself doing now.

Chapter 3

It may have been the warmth of the room or more likely the potency of the house wine, but Jayne found herself starting to relax. Having been initially shocked into silence, she was making up for it now, gabbling and prompting, asking and touching. She couldn’t stop touching him, actually couldn’t stop herself. She was peppering every question by gratuitously resting her hand on his forearm, which he, in turn, instinctively flexed a little each time it happened.

Rachel was sitting back in her chair smiling. It had taken her four years to persuade Jayne to cut his friendship bracelet off her wrist, by which time it was all matted and the once-vibrant red and green had faded to a grimy sort of grey. ‘Darling girl, it’s time,’ she’d said, approaching her sister with her nail clippers as they’d sat in Jayne’s room in her hall of residence.

Wearing his friendship bracelet had become a sort of talisman, a constant reminder that someone once thought that she was okay enough to buy a bracelet for. But Rachel was right; the chances of getting anyone else to ever kiss her were greatly reduced while she sported a grubby shackle around her wrist, so it went in the bin. Although, somewhat predictably, it didn’t stay there long; Jayne had waited for her sister to leave and then unearthed it under the two chicken-and-mushroom pot noodles they’d had for their dinner and popped it in her drawer.

Jayne had never been one of those girls whose sense of self worth depended on how many boys flirted with her. In fact, she’d be the first to admit that she wouldn’t have a clue if someone was actually flirting with her anyway – then or now. A wink probably indicated an eyelash gone rogue, a smile was no doubt meant for the person standing behind her and cheesy one-liners just elicited a quiet contempt from her, not giggles. In the months, then years, after Billy left, all the other sixth-formers were busy padding out their bras at the same time as their UCAS forms. Jayne, meanwhile, began burying herself in books, while glancing at her decorated wrist each time she turned a page.

Now that Jayne had the power of sight, and hindsight, she could see the shell of fifteen-year-old Billy was encased in a more mature, infinitely more stylish, and devastatingly attractive package. Even as a teenager he’d had an effortless soulful look that achieved that rare quality of never looking contrived. Back then, he’d never been so desperate for peer approval that he’d made a conscious decision to fit in, he just managed to. He listened to the Rolling Stones because he genuinely liked their songs, not because it embodied any sort of retro cool. He was the opposite of many of the kids at school, who swaggered about with a giant red tongue emblazoned on their t-shirts, while not being able to name five of their songs in a pop quiz. He still gave off that air now; nothing about him seemed put on or unnatural. He laughed because he found something funny and smiled because he felt like smiling.

Jayne was making no effort to conceal her excitement; she’d even wriggled to the edge of her seat, sitting as far forward as she could without gravity making the chair tip. ‘I can’t believe this! Okay, start with how you got here,’ she said, taking a bite of her garlic bread.

‘Bus. Number 33.’

‘No, you arse, why are you in London? What do you do here? Do you live here?’

Smiling at Jayne’s impatience, he said, ‘Yes I do, I moved here after catering college and then–’

‘You’re a chef! You always said you wanted to be – well done! Wow! That’s awesome!’

‘He’s a chef, Jayne, not a nuclear physicist, let the poor man speak,’ Rachel rolled her eyes at her sister, ‘Sheesh!’

‘Sorry, please continue.’

‘Thank you,’ he bowed his head in mock reverence. ‘So anyway, after college, I came up here to work in a kitchen in a hotel, which was really hard work but I stuck at it for about three years because even though the head chef was a nightmare, he was also amazing. But then I realised that I was in London and I should be enjoying it rather than being stuck in a sweaty kitchen pan-searing scallops all night every night, so I went to work in a riverfront café in Richmond, which was cool, very trendy, and stayed there for another three or four years and then last year I opened up my own deli.’ He paused, looking from one sister to the other, ‘What about you guys? Rachel, is Vivienne Westwood threatened by your genius yet?’

‘Sadly not,’ Rachel ventured as she dipped a breadstick in balsamic, ‘but I did go down the design route, kind of. I work for an interior-design firm, we do bars and restaurants. But not ones like this. More glass and metal and uncomfortable bar stools. Places where city types go to spend huge amounts of money on martinis.’

‘She’s underselling herself,’ said Jayne, ‘you should see some of the places she does, they’re amazing – the one at the top of the Midas Tower was incredible.’ Jayne turned briefly to her sister, ‘It was a bit dark, though. It was really difficult to read while I waited for you.’

‘Jayne, you are the only loser who would actually bring a book to a bar, so no offence, but that comment doesn’t count.’

‘A-hem.’ Will reached into his jacket pocket and held his book aloft for Rachel to see.

‘Oh. Okay, you two are the only losers.’

Will and Jayne shared a conspiratory smile, and then he said, ‘So Jayne, what do you do, apart from sneak in unapproved, yet indisputably genius, books to classrooms?’

‘I teach English and drama.’ She couldn’t help but sound a little apologetic at her career choice – here he was fulfilling a dream he’d had since he was fifteen, as was Rachel, kind of, and she spent her days specialising in riot control at a rowdy comprehensive. She clearly recalled sitting on the harbour wall in Brixham eating chips with Billy, announcing that she was either going to be an actress, a criminologist or a marine biologist. As a teenager you had all these fanciful ambitions that it never occurred to you weren’t realistic.

Mrs Slade, the careers advisor, once went around the room asking each child in turn what they wanted to do in life. Claire Bishop, who now showed people to their tables at The Inn on The Green, home of the two-meals-for-a-tenner menu, was adamant that she was going to work for NASA, and if you’d have told a fifteen-year-old Paul Ackroyd that he would forgo a future in politics for a spot on the fast-track graduate training scheme at Morrisons’ he’d have punched you in the face. Although, the fear of the act of violence returning to haunt him when he reached the hallowed door of Number Ten might have stopped him.

‘But teaching’s cool,’ Will said, ‘is it fun?’

‘You know what, it actually really is. I did drama at uni, and for a while wanted to go into acting, and so I did a couple of crappy plays that no one went to apart from friends of the actors who were in them–’

‘That’s not true, you were really good!’ Rachel interrupted. ‘Especially that one where you were an old Italian widow – what was that called?’

‘I was a Romany gypsy, and no, I wasn’t, but thank you.’ Jayne tipped her wine glass at her sister in a silent toast, ‘and so then I set up a drama club for kids who otherwise would be stabbing each other in the neck with sharpened pencils, and loved it, so then did a teaching course and here I am, ten years later, deputy head of English and Drama at what The Globe once called ‘The worst school in Britain’.’

‘And is it?’

‘No, not really, it’s in a bad area, and the exam results aren’t great, but apart from your usual handful of sociopaths that I should probably tip the police off about now to save time later, the kids are fab, and I love it.’

‘That’s really good,’ Will leant back in his chair, ‘I’m so pleased both of you found things you really like, and managed to get the hell away from Cruella. Sorry, am I allowed to call her that?’

‘That’s being kind, and not leaving Paignton was never an option!’ spat Rachel. ‘Can you imagine, if we hadn’t got out when we did, Jayne would be working in one of those amusement arcades that only have 2p machines that move back and forwards and I’d be on the game.’

‘At least you’d make money from sleeping with lots of men,’ Jayne jibed, ‘at the moment, you’re doing it for free.’

Rachel pinched her sister’s arm while pretending to pointedly ignore her comment. Focusing her attention solely on Will, she said, ‘I haven’t been back to Devon since leaving home at eighteen. Jayne goes back a bit more than me.’

‘What about your grandparents, though? You guys were quite close to them weren’t you?’

‘Sadly Pops died a few years ago, but Granny’s still fabulous,’ Jayne smiled, ‘We get her up to London a few times a year – she stays in town and we go for afternoon tea at the Savoy and to Sadler’s Wells to see the ballet. Basically she keeps us cultured in our otherwise heathen existences. But what about you? How long did you live in Slough?’

‘Ah, Slough. You know how in the credits for The Office it shows that big grey 1970s building on a busy roundabout? Well, that’s the best bit of it. I’m not kidding. Dad still lives there with his new wife, Trish, but I was hatching an escape plan pretty much as soon as we arrived there.’

‘So where do you live now?’

‘Richmond, above the deli.’

‘I love Richmond!’ Jayne gushed, ‘So you’ve been a couple of miles away from us all this time.’

‘Indeed.’ Will’s eyes twinkled, ‘I can’t believe you guys are here – this is awesome.’ The three of them sat in an easy silence, the kind that only happens when you’re with people who know each other really well, and even though almost two decades had passed since their last moment of amiable peace, it didn’t appear to matter at all.

They were still reminiscing and laughing long after their plates of tiramisu and coffees had been finished. The waiters started upending chairs on all the empty tables around them. The message couldn’t have been less overt had the staff all come out in their pyjamas.

‘I think that’s our cue. Subtle, aren’t they?’ Rachel said, thanking Will as he gallantly helped her back into her faux fur.

‘So, do you live near here? I can walk you back if you like?’

Jayne quickly replied, ‘that would be great,’ trying to sound as nonchalant as a bottle and a half of thirteen per cent wine would allow, at the exact moment Rachel replied, ‘No thanks, we’ll be fine.’ Sensing the eagerness, bordering on desperation, in her sister’s voice, Rachel then countered, ‘I mean, if it’s not too much trouble …’

Jayne knew she’d said it before, and no doubt would do again, but as the three of them linked arms and started weaving drunkenly towards the door, she made a telepathic pledge to work really hard to stop all wars and be the catalyst for bringing about world peace if God could just manage to make Will fall in love with her. Again.

Chapter 4

She felt a bit guilty about asking Him for an escape route out of singledom when there were refugees and victims of human trafficking and lepers in the world. Were there still lepers in the world? Jayne drunkenly wondered as they reached the Thai takeaway they lived above. Rachel started fumbling with her keys in the lock when Will leaned forward and said quietly in Jayne’s ear, ‘I’d really like to see you again.’

Deliberately misunderstanding, to protect herself from looking stupid Jayne replied, ‘That would be great, I’ll check with Rachel when’s good for her and let you know.’ Rachel’s back stayed resolutely facing them, even though she’d already turned the key in the lock.

Will, slightly chastened, swayed from foot to foot, ‘Um, obviously I want to hang out with both of you sometime, but I actually meant just you. By yourself. With me.’

‘Oh. Cool. Um, yes, that would be fine. I mean great. That would be wonderful. I’m free tomorrow.’ She checked her watch and saw that it was after midnight, ‘I mean today, tonight. Oh Jesus, does that make me sound really desperate? I mean I usually do have a really packed rock’n’roll schedule, but as luck would have it I’ve just had a cancellation,’ she grinned sheepishly. ‘And now I’m talking too much. You can retract your invitation at any time and I absolutely will not be offended.’

He smiled and ducked his head so his lips brushed her cheek ‘Tonight sounds awesome. There’s a little wine bar in Richmond called Magnum’s, do you know it? How about we meet there at eight?’

Will was barely out of earshot when Rachel spun round on the doorstep screaming. ‘O.M.G. He asked you out! You’re going on a date with him! This is beyond brilliant!’ Her eyes suddenly grew wide in horror, ‘Oh God. You have absolutely nothing to wear. If only we were the same size, that new DVF shirtdress I bought last week would be perfect. Right. I’m meant to be doing Zumba with Marco but I’ll tell him we’re spending the day finding you something gorgeous, he’ll understand.’ She started typing furiously on her phone, ‘I’ll tell him to meet us at Selfridges at ten.’

‘Ten? A.m.? On a Saturday? Seriously Rachel, I’ve got clothes, it’s not as though I walk around with nothing on all day every day, I’ll dig something out.’

‘Dig something out? Please tell me you didn’t just say that you would ‘dig something out’ for possibly the most important date you’ve ever had or ever likely to have? Jesus, Jayne, can you start taking this seriously?’