Jam (28 page)

When the sobs had subsided, she felt no better. She looked round; nobody in any of the nearby cars had noticed. She dried her eyes, sniffed, then stood with feet braced against a wave of giddiness. It passed. And when it passed, in that new clarity, she became aware of a noise that had been skirting the edges of her consciousness. She turned and squinted through the fog, catching sight of the footballing figures ghosting in and out of view. And there were Dave and Stevie.

A chill passed through her body and lodged in her abdomen. She squeezed her nails into her palms. She walked around the car and started towards them; she was going to say hi, whatcha doing, where'd'ya go, how long have I been out? She was going to ask if they had any water. But then she stopped, and felt that she didn't want to be seen at all. She slipped back behind the vehicle and watched them for a few minutes. Then she turned away.

Something was not right, that much she knew. In the centre of her chest the darkness of her dream remained, weighing her down. She didn't know what was wrong. Dave was all right, Stevie was all right. Shouldn't she be flattered that she turned him – them – on so much? This was uni, after all. She had to live a little, otherwise what was the point? It would have been unfair of her to have turned round and rejected him all of a sudden. She didn't want to get a reputation as a player right at the beginning. Those things stick, don't they? It had been bad of her to pretend to be asleep those last few times. But she just couldn't face it. She didn't want to carry on with him, and that was the honest truth, but she didn't know how to deny him.

This was all her own silly fault. Why was she being so uptight? Here were two guys who were really into her, especially Stevie, and what was she doing? Being stupid and pathetic. Why did she feel so shy? Why so unsure of herself? Where had her self-confidence gone? And why had she started to feel so revolted? There were guys uglier than Stevie.

Now no tears came. She was desperate for a drink of water;
she dared not approach Davie and Stevie or the other footballers, nor the men in the white van over there. She saw a woman sitting in a camper van with an older man. They looked approachable, but just as she was making up her mind to knock on the window, she saw the way they were speaking, and didn't dare to invade their privacy. It was as if the universe was turning its back on her.

Beyond the barrier, at the side of the motorway, there was a stretch of wasteland that shouldered up into a hill, dotted with clumps of trees. In front of it, Natalie noticed a figure sitting on some sort of metal box. A vaguely familiar man, wearing a uniform of some sort; on the ground in front of him was a bottle of water and a Waitrose carrier bag. In Natalie's mind's eye, a shaft of sunlight cut through the night and illuminated the bottle, causing the pure refreshment inside it to glint, the condensation on the outside to sparkle. By chance, or perhaps by way of that strange phenomenon that causes people to sense when others are looking at them, the man glanced up and smiled. And she recognised him as the driver of the Waitrose van that she had visited with Stevie and Dave earlier that night, so long ago.

‘All right?' he said.

She came to a stop in front of him. There was a moment's silence.

‘Sorry,' she said. ‘I just, like, wondered if I could have a little bit of your water please?'

‘Help yourself,' said Jim, shuffling along the top of the box. ‘Have a seat.'

Natalie did so, reached for the bottle.

‘Phew,' said Jim, ‘that's some aroma.'

‘Aroma?'

‘You smell like Bob Marley. No offence.'

‘None taken.'

How could she take offence? There was something easy about Jim's manner, something accepting; as soon as Natalie sat down
next to him she felt a sense of camaraderie, the two of them looking out at the world together. She twisted off the lid and drank, and the water was life-affirming and sweet. Then she regarded him as closely as she dared. He was old, in his forties perhaps, lean, and with eyes that seemed to be watching intently everything and nothing at once.

‘Have you come far?' said Jim.

‘I've been at a festival.'

‘Going anywhere urgently?'

‘No, not urgently.'

‘Still cold?'

‘I'm OK now.'

‘Good.'

‘What's in the bag?' said Natalie, noticing with some embarrassment that she had drunk almost half the bottle of water.

‘Oh, bits and bobs,' said Jim. ‘Help yourself. There are M&Ms, some chocolate digestives, a couple of bags of Haribo. Doritos. Stuff like that.'

‘What can I take?'

‘Whatever you want, love. There's always more where that came from.'

She took a packet of Oreos and helped herself to a couple.

‘How come you're sitting out here?' she said.

‘Got bored of sitting in the van. Realised it wasn't any safer in there anyway. So thought I might as well get some fresh air, like.'

Natalie offered the open end of the Oreos packet to Jim; he took a biscuit.

‘What about those boys you were with?' said Jim. ‘Assuming you were all together. You didn't go to the festival on your own, did you?'

‘No, no. They're my friends.'

‘Where are they? Passed out, stoned?'

‘No,' said Natalie, ‘they're playing football. See, over there?'

‘Oh, those guys. That's some sight, like,' he said. ‘Football on the M25.'

‘My friends are those ones on the left. See? Dave and Stevie.'

‘Dave and Stevie,' repeated Jim. ‘Either of them your boyfriend?'

‘It's complicated.'

‘Always is, like.'

‘Stevie, you know, he's sort of up for it. But I'm not.'

‘That don't sound too complicated to me,' said Jim. ‘It sounds pretty straightforward.'

‘But I just think, well, I don't know. I think it's my fault. Whatever.'

‘What's your fault?

‘This whole thing.'

‘You're not in love with him, like?' said Jim.

‘No! I mean, he's all right. But the thing is, I sort of maybe led him on?'

Jim frowned.

‘That don't sound right,' he said.

‘I'm not, like, a slapper,' said Natalie quickly. ‘But when he came on to me at first, like, I didn't say no. So how can I say no now?'

‘Sorry,' said Jim. ‘Sorry, I don't mean to embarrass you.'

‘Whatever.'

Natalie brought the water bottle to her lips and found it to be empty. Her head was fuzzy. The world looked creepy in the darkness, in the street lamplight, in the mist. She looked towards Dave and Stevie. They were running around like banshees, Stevie especially, flailing, competing. She looked away.

‘We went to the festival and it ended up, like, me and them in a tent,' she said. ‘Everyone else dropped out. And on the first night, you know, we got pissed and it, well, you know. I thought, like, fuck it. You only live once. Whatever.' She felt herself blushing uncontrollably. What was she doing, telling all this to a complete stranger? ‘I'm sorry,' she said, ‘I sound like I'm a dirty sket.'

There was a pause. ‘I can't pretend to know what that means, but it don't sound right to me.'

Natalie's blushes increased, but she went on. ‘It was my fault, anyway,' she said. ‘I let it carry on.'

‘What?'

‘I, like, didn't have a choice. I just . . . I mean you can't just turn round and sort of say, sorry, guys, like, I didn't know what I was doing, I was drunk, now go fuck yourselves.'

‘Why not?'

‘We were staying in the same tent.'

‘So what?'

‘So I couldn't just . . . it would have been . . . rude.'

‘Rude?'

‘Just . . . oh God, this is making me sound like such a twat.'

‘Not you,' said Jim. ‘Them.'

‘I know it sounds bad and everything,' said Natalie. ‘I thought so too, especially when they started giving me nicknames and stuff.'

‘What nicknames?'

‘It's nothing. It was only one nickname, actually. OK, all right. It was Piece of Meat. It's sort of like their sense of humour, you know.'

‘Piece of Meat?'

‘Yeah, but it sounds much worse saying it like that . . . it was like a joke to them. Whatever.'

Jim shook his head. ‘I'm sure it's none of my business,' he said, ‘and God knows I'm in no position to give advice, with my own life the way it is. But if you ask me, you've got to stand up for yourself, like.'

‘Do you think so?'

He looked around for inspiration. ‘I may have only known you five minutes, but I can see you're a decent girl. You're young. You just don't know yourself, that's all. And that's not a crime.'

‘But it wasn't Stevie's fault,' said Natalie, ‘it was mine. That's exactly what I'm saying.'

‘Look,' said Jim, ‘if you want to tell them where to get off, like, I'll give you a lift home. When this traffic moves.'

‘Where to get off?'

‘You know what I mean. If you want to . . . if you want to, just tell them to fuck off.'

‘I couldn't do that,' said Natalie.

‘Why not?'

‘It would be . . . I'd have to . . . all my stuff's in their car.'

‘That's what I said. I'll give you a lift. Be a chance to . . . you know, good deed for the day.'

‘Thanks,' she said. ‘I mean, that's great and everything, but, it's just that I don't really know you.'

‘You're right,' said Jim. ‘Anyway, the offer's there.'

Natalie buried her face in her hands for a moment, then shook her head and got to her feet.

‘You've been very kind and everything,' she said, ‘and I'm not saying I don't trust you or anything. You're right about everything. But Stevie and Dave are my friends. My uni friends. They're part of my world, you know? And I don't even know you or anything. I can't explain. But thanks for the advice and everything, you know . . . but, like I say, this was all my fault to begin with. I've probably not sort of explained it properly. I've probably made them out to be bastards when actually they're OK. Whatever. What I'm saying is . . . it's not that I don't sort of believe you or anything. But I just can't do what you're saying. That's it. I just can't.'

Penalty

Then the ball caught a deflection off Dave's shin and looped, spinning, into the air. It was now 5 a.m., and a grey light was spreading softly across the sky. The boys were back on the tarmac again, in the theatre of play, and once again were playing two-on-two with a single goal; Kabir had been nominated as goalkeeper, and he had accepted the position grudgingly.

Neither Stevie nor Dave had played football for a long time. Although Dave had played for his school First XI, his adolescence had been given over to the pleasure of the spliff, and this does not an athlete make. Stevie, of course, had never been much good. His left foot stuck out sideways when he ran, and his elbows flailed; in the playground he had always been stuck in some obscure position in midfield; and when he exerted himself he made a strange hissing sound, as if he were powered by steam. They were both, of course, easily outclassed by Shahid and Mo, as they had been all night.

The ball took flight. Shahid found himself at the right place at the right time for the volley, but it wasn't going to be easy with that spin. Nevertheless, such opportunities come only rarely, and his football brain had taken over, meaning that time had slowed down and the angles were appearing with great clarity to his mind's eye. He was faintly aware of the whoops coming from the white van on the other side of the motorway; the two men had been cheering and heckling, drinking from a bottle, and although it was bizarre to be responded to in this way on a night-time motorway – and although he had been
wrong-footed by it at first – as the game had gone on, his brain had processed the cheers and boos and begun to relate to them in the same way he related to the noise of the fans each Saturday at London APSA. The ball came down before him as if on angelic wings. He took a right-footed crescent swing and caught the sweet spot. It shot like a dart from his laces, cut a clean curve through the dawn sky and disappeared past Kabir before he could even move. It continued without bouncing, glanced off the uppermost edge of the motorway barrier beyond and burrowed deep into the shrubbery.

‘Ten-two,' shouted Shahid jubilantly, exchanging hand slaps with Mo, ‘ten-fucking-two!'

‘No,' said Stevie shrilly, ‘ten-three. Ten-three.'

‘You haven't got three goals, brah.'

‘We have. We have. The first two Dave scored off solo runs, remember? The third was mine. The one that caught a deflection and shit.'

‘Oh yeah, right you are,' said Shahid. ‘The own goal.'

‘Not own goal. Deflection.'

‘Right. Deflection. A memorable goal, that one.'

‘Yeah, it was a memorable goal,' said Stevie, his voice rising. ‘It was a memorable goal.'

Shahid grinned. With every goal that he scored, he was feeling better. This reaction proved he was getting under their skin. He wanted more. He wanted to beat these fuckers until they bled: no revenge, but revenge enough.

‘Yeah,' said Kabir, ‘but how do we get the ball back?'

‘Just go and get it, brah,' said Shahid. ‘I'll get the next one. Promise.'

Kabir hesitated, then disappeared into the shrubbery.

‘Look,' said Mo, ‘why don't we change the teams around? One of us and one of you. Otherwise it's not fair.'

‘Might be a good idea,' said Dave.

‘I'm not agreeing to that,' said Stevie quickly. ‘We're not going to give up like that.'

‘You're not giving up?' said Mo. ‘We've been beating the shit out of you all night. It's ten fucking two.'