It was an entire year ago, although it feels like more. I can still smell the cigarettes and the sweet beer, see the silhouettes of my oldest friends together around the table. It was our last night in Cornwall, and tomorrow we all went to University. Carl went to Sheffield, Ann to Newcastle, Jake to Birmingham. Me? To
‘Cooking was a nightmare,’ I said. ‘It was my worst GCSE.’
Jake laughed, a dark curl escaping as he threw his head back.
‘Why?’ Carl said, sipping his pint. ‘Free choice every week. Make shortbread every week.’
‘I was not this smart,’ I said.
‘It's true,’ Jake said, fingering his lip ring. ‘I made fruit salad a lot. Chop banana. Chop apple. Add orange juice. And there you are.’
‘Sandwiches were easy,’ I said, watching a drop of water run down the side of my vodka coke and onto the table.
There was one of those silences. You know the ones – when you’ve gone and said something daft.
With these friends – my oldest friends – those silences were delicious, breathing with the anticipation of fresh laughter.
‘Sandwiches?’ Jake said, raising his eyebrows.
‘Yes, did you not make sandwiches?’ I said.
‘Sandwiches?’
‘Yes.’
‘Er, no, I was not in the remedial cooking class.’
I smirked at him, for this was our rapport. Ann, my best girl-friend, patted my knee with her plump hand. ‘You can help it, can you Kate?’ she said.
‘What, being remedial?’ I said. “This is so patronising, I need more alcohol.’
‘Good, it’s your round,’ Jake said, smirking at me. I feel a jolt in my stomach, a kind of frisson as his dark eyes meet mine. Shaking my head slightly, I headed to the bar. I paced along the length of my bar, out of sight of my friends. Sometimes, those jolts, that sheer chemistry I felt with my non-boyfriend was overwhelming, leading to pacing in toilets, talking to myself in the mirror, my eyes dark and serious looking back at me. I didn’t – and don’t – know what Jake and I are.
My small hands shaking, I carried the round back to the table. “I just got everyone vodka cokes,” I said, sitting down. “Too remedial to remember much else.” Ann nodded at me, a smile playing somewhere along her lips.
‘Hardly!’ Carl was saying. ‘I think it had more to do with the five Guinnesses than anything else.’
‘Ah, Nadia,’ I said, smirking. Carl’s most famous shag: six feet tall, three feet wide, moustache.
‘You can’t talk,’ Ann said, not quite focusing on me. She waved her hand in Jake’s direction. ‘You and him got together so often this year, you may as well have gone out.’
I was mock-angry. ‘At least he is not scary-looking,’ I said. Quite the opposite, in fact.
‘That’s debateable,’ he said, smirking. ‘That’s behind her now, anyway’ he said. ‘She’s going to find a University man aren’t you Kate?’
Honestly boys are so confusing. I remember, a frown must have flickered across my face, but I shrugged it off, to be stoic, one of the boys.
‘Of course. That’s what virginal people do at Uni. Have casual sex in freshers’ week. Find a man in about March, get a 2:1. Even the geeks of the class manage that.’
Jake smiled at me from under his brow. ‘You’ll get your 2:1, and the rest,” he said.
‘I am sure I will whine daily about what they force me to read,’ I said.
‘No you won’t,’ Jake said. His tone was certain. Jake always seemed to know what was going on.
We lapsed into silence, the others no doubt embarrassed by the air of awkwardness between Jake and I. We had never discussed, in the long, four month summer, what was to happen when we left for Uni. It seemed unreal to me. To him – I don’t know.
Carl stretched out a long, thin arm and put his beer on the table. Ann leant her head against the cool, blackened window. We all heard the distant rustling of the waves.
‘It will be weird for you guys not to live by the sea,’ Ann said, raking a hand through her blue-black hair. ‘
‘Yes. And it’s full of factories and Brummies,’ I said. ‘Thank God we’re at home almost as much as we are at Uni.’
‘Don’t think like that!’ Ann said. ‘It’ll be wonderful and you’ll never want to come home.’
‘The holidays are ace though,’ Carl said, rocking back on his chair, his long limbs outstretched onto the table. ‘Go to a few weeks of lectures. Month off for Christmas. Few more, Easter. Then, judging by my sister, two exams and five months off.’
‘Two exams,’ Jake said. ‘Fuck’s sake. What does she do?’
‘English. Of course.’ Carl said. I glared.
‘I bet the exams are very, very long. And you have to write with a quill,’ I said. I was quite drunk. I extrapolate when I’m drunk.
‘Two hours.’ Carl said.
‘Well,’ I said, embracing my status as an arts student and taking a sip of vodka coke. ‘I hope you have 30 exams and they’re all about manufacturing boring shit.’
‘Actually you will have plenty of time to revise, Carl,’ Ann said. ’10 men to every one woman on Chemical Engineering is not a very good ratio. It’s much better for you Jake on music. All women and gay men.’
‘Does that include you then?’ I said.
‘Now you know I am not gay.’ His eyes were pointed, and he was smirking.
Ann smiled, at us, her eyes knowing. She brushed her hair off her face, her many black bracelets rattling. ‘I reckon medicine’s about equal. Apparently though,’ her eyes lit up, ‘most of the dead bodies are men.’ I smiled, remembering her birthday just gone. We’d clubbed together and bought her a stethoscope, which she wore to school all week.
It was hard to believe I wouldn’t sit in the common room with them all, eating cheap chocolate from the vending machine and drinking stale tea. It felt as if University were a break; a holiday from my usual life to which I would undoubtedly return. How wrong I was.
Carl stood. ‘I need a piss,’ he said, loosing his belt. Ann wrinkled her nose.
‘That’s gross,’ she said. ‘But I am joining you, I need to go.’
He raised an eyebrow. Honestly our group was so incestuous. Secretly, I loved this security. She rolled her eyes. ‘Separately, of course.’
I eyed her drink. ‘If you go once you don’t stop,’ I said, poking her in the stomach as she got up.
Ann smiled. ‘I know, but I think it’s time to open the floodgates, I’m desperate.’ I watched her walk down the stairs, her pear-shaped frame shadowed against the pool lights which caught her almost-blue hair and grazed Carl’s head.
I looked at Jake folding a beer mat in half. I remember his large hands always smelt of soap. I looked out of the window and saw the moon, cradled in the sky. The moon appeared twice, until I realised one was its reflection in the window. I closed my left eye and then my right, to be sure. I glanced back, the room taking slightly longer to catch up with my gaze than it should.
He was watching me. ‘You’re wasted already,’ he said, eventually, smiling.
‘I know.’ I said. ‘I’m going to be wasted for months from now aren’t I? Starting tomorrow, you’ll see.’
Jake’s brown eyes rested on mine. He mmm-d. I picked up my phone. He drummed a beat on the table.
The awkwardness hung in the air between us. Neither of us knows or knew why, but it always did in moments like this. We could spend entire days together, never pausing for breath, sharing our views on Slipknot, Tony Blair, Little Britain, but these moments, these almost-painful minutes after the end of one thing and the start of another were uneasy, slow, restless.
‘What is this song? I said finally. I recognised its strains, the singer’s crackly voice.
He listened intently for a moment, wearing what I cal his music face, somewhere between a frown and a smile, or a mix of both, his eyes intense. ‘Don’t know,’ he said eventually, picking up his mobile and holding it up to the speaker above his head.
Jake is like this: wordless, sometimes using actions and grimaces and eyebrow raises.
I stared at him a moment. ‘New service,’ he said. ‘It texts you what the song is, with other geeky trivia.’
I smiled. ‘Perfect for music snobs,’ I say. I pride myself on this. My music collection was vast, is now vaster still, stretching from rap to rock to classical. I know it well, each song having its time. If they were books, they would have loose pages, scribbles in the margins, curling corners.
His phone beeped. ‘Incubus,’ he said. ‘Monuments and Melodies. Very random,’ his eyes met mine, ‘Found on the B-side of the Megalomaniac single.’
I smiled, for he understands. ‘Do you own this?’ he said.
I nodded. ‘I remember it now. Plus, in the video Brandon Boyd has his top off.’
He smiled, his lip curling up slightly in that way that it did. ‘Impressive. Obscure Incubus knowledge, I like it.’
‘Is that WAP then, that thing you just did on your phone?’ I said, intrigued.
‘I think so,’ he said.
‘God.’
‘What?’
‘Where is the internet kept?’ I said.
He laughed, and it was always loud, compared to his soft voice. ‘Classic Kate-ism,’ he said. ‘Where is the internet kept…’
‘What!’ I said.
‘What’s this?” Carl’s deep voice said behind me.
Jake’s eyes flicked to me and back to him. ‘Kate was just wondering where the internet was kept.’
‘Oh, in a box,’ Carl said, patting my head.
‘Big box,’ I said, smiling, as Jake’s head sank into his hands.
‘You been having Kate moments?’ Ann said, sitting down and sipping her pint.
‘Just slightly,’ I said. ‘Was wondering where the internet was kept.’
‘I know,’ she said. ‘The room must be really big.’
I loved her, then. And I puffed up, smiling.
Carl’s blond eyebrows raised. ‘Yes, the room is so big they have to organise transport across it so Mr Google can look up everybody’s queries in time,’ he said.
I rolled my eyes. ‘Boys are so knowledgeable.’ And then – that drunken leap of logic - ‘they must be Google.’
Ann’s blue eyes meet mine as she nodded sagely. ‘Boys are very elusive. They could definitely be Google.’
‘Yes, I know,’ I said, excited now. ‘And they are always doing “stuff.” What is “stuff”?’
Jake stared at me, slightly aghast. ‘It is not answering a million internet queries a second,’ he said.
‘How would you know?’ I said. This makes no sense to anyone.
I revelled in the banter that night, drinking it in. It was to be the last night for months. Long, yawning months full of so many looming experiences. Sex, lectures, laundrettes.
‘Right,’ Ann said, slapping her hands onto her thighs. ‘I think I have to go; I don’t want a hangover on the ten-hour car ride tomorrow.’ She grimaced. I stood, instinctively, and she looked at me evenly. ‘Come here,’ she said, pulling me towards her and patting my back. I felt my face squished, drunk, against her black sweater, my hands in balls on her back. I was quickly turning into an emotional drunk, and I pulled away.
‘I’ll visit as soon as you’re settled,’ I said.
‘No, you won’t.’ She smiled. ‘And that’s fine.’ She made her way around our group, hugging them under the dim lights. ‘Right then, this is it.’ She sighed, pushing her thick hair back and picking up her purple bag. ‘All go find yourselves, and work hard, and learn to cook and all the rest of it,’ she said. She turned and walked slowly towards the door.
‘I hate to do the rounds again but I need to go too. Anybody who needs a lift is welcome,’ Carl said. He stood up and stretched by the light. His silhouette is all long limbs and big ears.
‘Thanks, but I think I’m going to walk,’ I said, glancing at Jake. It was an eleven-minute walk to Jake’s turning and we almost always walked. Carl towered over me sheepishly. I squeezed him, whispering bye Mr. Google, he smiled, so fondly, and he was gone.
‘Right then,’ Jake said, turning his black eyes on me. ‘Reckon we’ll beat our four-hour record?’
That night. We had strolled through playgrounds and stopped on swings and sat on the cool tarmac whilst Jake smoked. We lay, splayed under weeping willows with grass stains on our elbows, gazed out across sand dunes with sea salt tangling our hair. The night we lay so close that I could count the golden flecks in his black eyes, twirl his lip ring between my forefinger and thumb.
‘Course,’ I said, walking lightly down the steps and into the balmy night. The pub stands on a narrow dusty road lined with weeds and parched grass. In the distance the sand dunes were black triangles against the navy-blue sky. The temperature was still stifling in mid-September. The tourists had been trailing the high streets in droves, stopping at the markets full of hot, shiny fruit. The locals were sweating and complaining of the heat they so desperately wished for in the stormy winter nights. Amongst the crammed beaches there were donkeys aching with the weight of sweaty toddlers, suntanned surfers, struggling artists.
‘I love the smell of night,’ I said. Jake smiled, saying nothing, and lit a cigarette. He held it low by his side, the tip an amber orb in the night. That was the smell. The sea, the grass, Jake’s cigarettes. What would night smell like in London, without the sea, without him?
‘It’s all a bit of a gamble isn’t it?’ he said, taking a long drag. He looked so cool, that night. Head to toe in black, broad shoulders, deep frown. But something in his back, the very way he held his spine, portrayed the tension.
‘Is it?’
‘It’s very scary. What if I get stuck with a horrible flat? Or don’t like my course? I feel a bit like we’re seeing the corner of a much bigger picture, and not knowing what it means.’
Jake speaks like this. Monosyllabic, almost disdainful, until alone, and then in bursts, about unsigned bands, the general public, pet peeves, Renaissance music.
‘You’re sounding very Dawson’s Creek,’ I said, a smile playing on my lips. ‘It must be normal to be nervous. You’re leaving everything you know.’
‘It kind of feels like exam results, or something. All based on chance. University might be perfect. You might nail it. You might fuck it up and that will impact the rest of your life.’ He pauses, and then, walking faster. ‘I keep thinking about how I’m probably going to meet my life friends tomorrow. How I’m going to have to do my own cooking. How I’ll be expected to have adult relationships and actually write essays on Mozart and Slipknot. And then I think, what can anyone do about any of it? It’s all about where you happen to be, and who you happen to talk to. It’s just luck, like anything.’
‘I know,’ I said, but I didn’t. I hadn’t thought about it. Things just seemed to turn out right for me, then. What if, tomorrow, they didn’t? The idea of leaving home tomorrow, forever, crashed over me with the enormity of an ocean wave, jolting my stomach.
My hand found his and we walked along in silence. Would my life, I thought, the next time I heard that owl, saw that chunky tree root, be completely different?
He puffed deeper still on his cigarette. ‘Your life can’t really change in 24 hours, can it?’ He said, rubbing his thumb along my index finger.
‘Yes,’ I said quietly.
‘You are still the same person when you go. It’s almost like I’m being placed in these different surroundings, suddenly my whole life will be different but I won’t. So what then? Do you reinvent yourself? Because you could, couldn’t you?’
I stopped as we reached Jake’s turning. I leant against the hedges that marked off his street, the moonlight shining on their waxy leaves.
‘To be honest I haven’t thought about it. I don’t even know whether my student loan’s in, or how to use a washing machine, or what I’ll wear, or who I’ll meet. I’ve barely read two books on my reading list because it feels so unfair that I am supposed to know anything that I haven’t really tried.’
The reading list, I remember vividly. Five pages of neatly typed script, so neat it was almost casual. Read Paradise Lost. The Iliad. Long, Latin, Greek, Renaissance texts that my school, with its graffiti, boarded up windows and tired teachers, did not even own copies of.
I looked faintly over Jake’s shoulder.
‘So it’s all hitting you now?’ he said, slowly, his eyes moving from my face, to the sea, to my hair, my arms, my eyes.
My throat was tight. ‘You know, I used to pretend my bedroom was a flat. When I would come home from school I always used to keep my coat and shoes on. I’d take them off in there and shut the door and pretend it was where I lived, what I’d worked for. Now I’ll have that and I think I’d rather the pretend version.’
Jake pulled me towards him, resting his head on mine.
‘You will be fine,’ he said. ‘You will find a group of people so well-suited to you that you’ll forget all about us. You’ll come back looking different, older, more radiant, and rave about it.’
I stepped back slightly and he leant down and placed his mouth softly on mine. We didn’t really kiss. We just stayed there forever, so familiar, the tip of his nose on mine, his warm lips almost melting away. I’m not sure when the kiss ended and when my face was back against his collar bone, when I said that nothing would be the same again, and when I said goodnight, our dark eyes meeting and parting for the last time for months to come. As I walked home I was sure the lampposts looked down and the trees should their heads sorrowfully at me. I padded upstairs to my bedroom and shut my door softly, climbing into bed with my cat and my book and my soft pyjamas, almost hoping to wake up ten years ago.
