The problem is that she likes her hair the same way, and she likes many of the things that I like. Including Jonny.
She said she wanted to get to know me again, but she spends more time at the counter or in the office talking to Jonny than she does out here serving the tables with me. With her breasts trying to pop her blouse buttons open.
I want to say something but it sounds childish. I’m not going to let her force me into feeling like a vulnerable, possessive child. I don’t want to let her know she has the power to make me jealous, or to doubt Jonny. I don’t doubt him. I’ve never fretted over Jonny’s faithfulness. He’s a good man.
But her …
I don’t trust her.
She makes me feel as if I’m lying to myself when I say I trust Jonny. Because I am afraid our relationship isn’t strong enough to withstand Susan the bulldozer.
Yes, it is. Jonny loves me.
I pick up the tray I’ve filled with dirty china and cutlery and carry it over to her.
My movement draws her eyes away from Jonny.
‘Here, you can take this into the kitchen and get the dishwasher going; we’re running low on china,’ I say.
A frown creases her brow, deepening the single wrinkle in the middle of her forehead above her nose. The frown fans out from there in slender lines.
I smile. Go on. Get lost. What has she been up to for all those intervening years?
Behind her back, Jonny’s dark eyebrows lift, asking me why? He knows we’re not running low on clean china.
When she turns away, I poke my tongue out at her back. She has succeeded in making me a child again. I hate her. I have only agreed to her working here for six months on the grounds that at the end of those six months she’ll leave the Lake District and leave me alone. And then there’s the old adage, keep your friends close but your enemies closer.
Jonny’s lips twist in a lopsided smile and he shakes his head a little, his eyes laughing at me but in a way that cautions too.
See. We are close. We can have long conversations across the café without words. We are as close as twins. We are us, me and Jonny.
I send him a smile, letting my inner laughter and love flow into my eyes for him to see. I adore him ten million more times than I hate Susan.
Marie catches my gaze, but she quickly looks away.
Behind me the bell above the door rings announcing more customers.
I turn around but in the same moment Marie walks around the counter to great them and direct them to a table. She must have seen them approaching through window.
A hand rests at my waist. There’s breath on my neck. His lips press against the hollow of my neck where it turns to my shoulder and his hand taps my side.
‘You can be a bitch sometimes, sweetheart,’ Jonny whispers against my ear as he pulls away.
I turn my head and our gazes clash. ‘Sometimes, people deserve bitchiness,’ I answer, smiling again.
‘We’re practising forgiveness,’ he reminds me in a light voice that half jokes but the other half of the lilt in his tone tells off my jealous child.
He might be on the forgiveness page with Susan but I am working through a different book called temporary tolerance.
The bell rings again, announcing the arrival of another customer. I toss Jonny a less sincere smile, pull the pad and pen out of my apron, and go to take the order.
Chapter 18
1985
I shift my bottom, trying to sit in a slightly different position on the metal bicycle rack. I’ve been sitting here for hours, and in my stoned state the discomfort is an increasing noise in my head. Any moment I will keel over like a boat out of water or fall like a felled tree.
Jonny passes the joint to me. As I take the skinny stub of white roll-up, our fingers brush.
He smiles an uneven smile at me, his lips listing to the left. The smile lifts to his charmer’s eyes.
He bought the cannabis, tobacco, and papers. The dependence on our theft has reduced because Jonny has a job working in the kitchen of a café for the summer.
It’s been warm for the last fortnight. We’ve spent every long day out in the park making the best of the light evenings, mostly with Wayne and Jay because Jonny is working. But Jonny always comes here straight after work.
I spend every minute of every day waiting for the moment when Jonny walks over the grass to join us. My heartbeat jolts harder at the first glimpse of him and my insides wobble. I know Susan feels the same but I don’t think she knows that I feel it too. She doesn’t seem to know what I think anymore. Or she doesn’t care.
He is holding her now, with his back against the corrugated iron side of the bicycle store and his legs splayed. Susan is standing between his legs, leaning against him. His arms wrap around her middle.
She turns her head, looking up as he bends. Their lips touch.
Wayne and Jay ignore them. But I watch, and occasionally his eyes turn to me, saying, why are you staring, Sarah?
Because I like you too. He must know it. But if Susan doesn’t, maybe he doesn’t either. I haven’t told her. It’s the first secret I’ve kept from her. I haven’t told her because I think it will annoy her. I don’t understand where a boy fits in between us. Does she like him more than me? What would she do if I tell her I like him too? What would she say if I tell her it hurts me to watch her kissing him?
He is dividing us. Bit by bit. It has progressed from seconds to minutes, then from minutes to hours. Even when they are apart we think of him and not each other. Sometimes they go off together in the evening. They get something from the shop or something from his house. There’s always a reason why she doesn’t want me to go with her. ‘No, we don’t need anyone else to come.’ ‘Jonny is coming with me, you don’t need to, Sarah.’ It always takes them longer than it should. Susan and I aren’t us anymore. It’s her and him.
I am jealous. Envious. When she leaves me with Jay and Wayne, she turns me into the incredible hulk – green and vicious with anger. I hate her sometimes now. I don’t want to be left behind. I don’t like her doing things that I haven’t done. We used to do everything together. I want to be with Jonny too.
‘Hurry up, have a good drag, then give me the joint,’ Jay says.
I draw a deep breath through the joint, the heat from the burning tobacco and the drug burns my lips as the poison from the cannabis scatters through my brain. My body is a ragdoll’s.
I don’t know where I fit in anymore. I don’t have a place.
‘You okay?’ Jonny is watching me.
My eyes might have rolled up for a moment; the world turned black.
‘I just need to sit on the floor,’ I say. My head is spinning. I take another drag from the joint and pass it to Jay, then slide down the metal rack. My bottom hits the hard tarmac.
I close my eyes as the cannabis brushes over me. It’s like that, like a sweep of feeling. It makes me float.
I like lying on the grass in the darkest place I can find and looking at the moon and the stars when I’m stoned.
We often stay out all night now it’s warm. We run home at sunrise, sleep for a couple of hours and leave again before anyone from social services or the police are likely to come around and force us to go to school. Mum had a letter from the school’s solicitor. They are taking her to court. They said they will fine her or lock her up in prison if we don’t go to school.
We don’t go. She can’t make us.
She tries to get Uncle Charlie to make us go but he is out at work in the morning and he can’t make us go.
So we live on the streets nearly all day and night.
Something touches my head, ruffling my hair. I open my eyes and look up.
Jonny is touching me. I see him through a haze that’s like looking through water.
‘Don’t have any more, Sarah.’
I don’t answer. I can’t answer. I can’t make my lips or my tongue move.
Susan reaches out to take the last of the joint from Jay.
My head tumbles back and bumps against the metal. I let my head rest there, on the cold metal pillow, as my thoughts swim in the water that is all around me.
The others’ conversation drifts in single, isolated words, and the sounds sail off on the mild evening air. I don’t know how late it is. It’s probably only nine o’clock and I am drunk and stoned out of my head.
A smile slides my lips over my teeth.
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