Kiss (13 page)

Carl grinned at me and checked his wrist-watch. ‘We’re meeting them outside at seven thirty? We’re going to be ever so early. What do you want to do? We could always go and have a coffee or something.’

‘Or a drink.’

‘Or a meal.’

‘Or go night-clubbing.’

‘Or take the train to the coast.’

‘No, take the plane to …’

‘Paris?’

‘No, Venice. We’ll go to see the glass-blowers on Murano and buy the most beautiful chandelier.’

‘We’ll hang it in the palace and hold a grand ball and dance until the small hours.’

‘And meanwhile Miranda and Paul will be down the bowling alley, rolling the balls at the pins.’

We laughed a little too uproariously. Then we were silent. We could see the alley at the end of the road, its blue and orange neon sign flashing hypnotically. We trudged towards it.

‘We don’t
have
to meet up with them tonight,’ I said. ‘We
could
just slope off and leave them to it. We don’t have to go off to anywhere exotic. We could simply go home and hide out in the Glass Hut, just being
us
.’

‘I know. Stop tempting me,’ said Carl.

‘You
don’t
like bowling, do you?’

‘No. I can’t stand it.’

‘So why did you start all this?’

Carl sighed. ‘I suppose I wanted to impress Paul.’

I was baffled. I’d never known Carl try to impress anyone before. I imagined Paul in my mind, tall and athletic, in football strip, with one of those handsome, chiselled, square-jawed faces. I tried hard but I couldn’t project any expression onto him. He lumbered stiffly through my thoughts like a soldier doll, tanned and plastic and ready for action.

‘Hey, he’s there already! He’s even earlier than us!’ said Carl, suddenly hurrying, almost running.

I squinted at all the guys hanging around
outside the bowling alley, lolling against the wall, jumping up and down the steps, sitting on the wall kicking their feet. None was a likely candidate for Football Paul. Then a boy started waving – and Carl waved back.

So this was Paul, this ordinary-looking boy in a hoodie and faded jeans and scuffed trainers. He was a little taller than Carl and a little broader. He had darkish-blond hair, gelled and spiky. He had a few freckles across his nose and cheeks and a grin that showed a lot of his teeth. I couldn’t decide if he was good looking or not. He didn’t seem a
patch
on Carl.

They were messing around together, Carl and Paul, doing a weird elaboration of a high-five routine, and then playing some crazy kind of kung fu, chopping thin air and making daft sounds. I stared at them. I’d never seen Carl acting the fool like this – he was normally way too cool. He saw me staring.

‘Hey, Paul, this is my friend Sylvie,’ he said.

Why couldn’t he say
girl
friend?

‘Hello, Paul,’ I said.

He held out his hand. I thought he was still mucking around kung fu-ing so I kept my own arm pinned to my side. He withdrew his arm, looking disconcerted. He’d simply been trying to shake my hand. I felt awful but it seemed too late to start all over again. I nodded at him instead, smiling manically to show I wanted to be friends.

‘Where’s Miranda?’ said Paul.

He was eyeing me up and down, obviously hoping Miranda would be more promising.

‘She’s meeting us here. We’re still a bit early,’ I said.

It was torture waiting for Miranda. Carl and Paul and I made stilted three-way conversation for a little while but this soon tailed away into awkward silence. So Carl asked Paul about some match he’d played that afternoon and they were off speaking boring football-lingo. I was surprised that Carl could talk it. He was a little too sycophantic, going on and on about Paul’s astonishingly amazing brilliant performance, like he’d done complicated brain surgery while whistling the Hallelujah chorus. He’d just run around a field kicking a ball, for heaven’s sake. Carl actually used the word ‘awesome’.

I stared at him, wondering if he was actually sending Paul up. No, he seemed
serious
. I raised one eyebrow at him. He didn’t raise one back. He edged away, practically turning his back on me, standing in a little huddle with Paul, cutting me out. He was treating me the way he treated
Lucy
. I was so hurt and cross I almost stomped off home by myself, but I felt I had to wait for Miranda.

We all waited and waited and waited.

‘Is this Miranda actually going to turn up?’ Paul said, turning to me.

‘Yes, of course she is,’ I said, though I was starting to wonder myself.

Miranda was ten minutes late.

I checked my mobile for messages. I sent Miranda a text, then another.

Fifteen minutes.
Twenty
.

I tried ringing her but she was engaged. Maybe she was sitting cosily at home, ringing Alice or Raj or Andy, having sensibly decided to give the bowling date a miss.

Twenty-five minutes.

‘She’s not coming,’ said Paul, frowning. He obviously wasn’t used to being stood up.

‘Is she mucking us about?’ Carl said crossly, glaring at me as if it was somehow
my
fault.

‘How do
I
know?’ I said.

I tried giving her one last ring on her mobile – and got through to her.

‘Hi! Why are you phoning? I’m
here
,’ said Miranda.

There she was, walking towards us, looking stunning in very tight jeans, a black satin shirt (mostly unbuttoned) and a crazy furry waistcoat. Her hair wafted past her shoulders in a mad cloud of curls. She took little swaying steps on account of the incredibly high heels of her killer boots.

Carl and Paul stared at her. Carl smiled. Paul shook his head, looking bemused. He gave a little whistle.

‘
She
’s Miranda?’ he said. ‘Oh boy!’

Miranda came wiggling up to us, laughing and talking and hugging as if we were all her oldest friends, even Paul –
particularly
Paul. She didn’t apologize for being so late; she didn’t
seem the slightest bit fussed about it. She let Carl pay for her to go into the bowling alley as if it was totally her due, not even bothering to thank him. She didn’t take much notice of me either. She just nattered away to Paul and he nodded and smiled and preened in a totally sickening fashion.

‘Happy now?’ I said to Carl as we queued up.

‘Sure,’ he said, but he didn’t actually seem sure at all.

I hated the noise and blare and stale chippy smell of the alley. I hated the game itself. I couldn’t seem to get the knack at all. I tried to copy the others, bending down and then rolling the ball, but I was lousy at aiming – once my ball jiggled over into the neighbouring alley, causing four boys to start screaming abuse at me. I ignored them, though I knew my face was beetroot red. I stood with my hand on my hip, yawning every now and then, trying to pretend that the game bored me silly and I wasn’t even going to try to play properly, but I didn’t fool anyone.

It didn’t help that the other three were so good at it. Paul was by far the best, aiming stylishly, effortlessly, his ordinary boy body suddenly taking on a Glass Boy grace. He spoiled it by punching the air and leaping about crazily each time he knocked ten pins down, which happened with monotonous regularity.

Carl did his best to copy his style, bending
exactly the same way, extending his head, flicking his wrist, like a Paul shadow. He could copy the technique but he didn’t have Paul’s natural ability. He looked good but he only ever demolished half his pins.

Miranda did things
her
way, of course. She could barely bend in her tight jeans and adopted an odd crouching position, her bum in the air, so that all the boys in the bowling alley started goggling at her. She was very aware of this and played up to her audience, tossing her hair and leaning further forward so that the remaining two buttons on her shirt strained and popped. Everyone expected her to bowl as badly as me, but somehow she had the knack. The ball left her hand, spurted up the alley and knocked the pins over with a satisfying thunk each time.

Miranda and Paul were level-pegging for a while, but then he started drawing ahead. Miranda laughed and clapped him, telling him he was absolutely fantastic in this silly breathy voice. I thought she’d been taken over by aliens, just like Carl, but when she looked at me she pulled a funny face, raising her eyebrows. She was obviously just playing a silly game with him, scoring her own jackpot.

The evening was starting to seem endless. It was all Paul’s fault. He was making Carl and Miranda behave like cartoon morons. I hated the way he lorded it over Carl, jostling him, swearing, telling silly jokes. Carl tried hard to
join in, though it was the sort of behaviour he’d always despised. I hated the way Paul looked at Miranda, as if she was a page-three pin-up. She played up to him, wiggling and giggling until I wanted to shake her.

I hated the way Paul treated
me
. He ignored me most of the time, as if I truly wasn’t worthy of his attention, but when he felt it necessary he ordered me around like I was someone’s little sister, only there under sufferance.

We went and had hot dogs and chips, and Paul squiggled red and yellow lines of ketchup and mustard up and down his dog and then started squiggling Carl’s too. Carl just laughed, even when they were drenched. Then he grabbed the ketchup and started swamping Paul’s meal in turn. I couldn’t believe it.

Miranda sighed and started eating her chips delicately, one by one.

‘Here, let’s make them a bit tastier for you, Miranda,’ Paul giggled, aiming the mustard at her plate.

‘You squirt so much as a spoonful and I’ll ram it down your throat and season your tonsils,’ Miranda said calmly.

Paul blinked at her, taken aback. ‘Hey, hey, lighten up, I’m only joking,’ he said.

Carl was surreptitiously scraping the worst of the sauce off his food. I knew just how much he hated cheap ketchup and mustard.

‘What about you, Sylvie?’ said Paul, juggling the red and yellow bottles.

‘No thanks. You’re behaving like two-year-olds,’ I said primly.

Paul pulled a face. ‘Oooh, I consider myself severely chastised,’ he said in a silly voice. ‘That’s rich, coming from the youngest of us.’

‘I bet I’m
not
the youngest,’ I said. ‘How old are you? When’s your birthday?’

It turned out I was the second oldest.

‘So it’s your birthday very soon, Carl,’ said Miranda. ‘What do you want? I know, some select and sparkling item of glasswear.’

I held my breath. If Miranda started talking about Glassworld then Carl would kill me. No, worse. He’d never play Glassworld with me again.

Paul laughed, thinking this was some kind of crazy joke. ‘Glass?’ he said. ‘What are you on about? Why would he want glass?’

‘Oh, our Carl’s total Glass Boy, didn’t you know?’ said Miranda.

Carl’s head jerked. Miranda saw it too.

‘You love my stained-glass windows, don’t you Carl?’ she said smoothly. ‘Didn’t you say you had your own glass collection?’

‘Sort of,’ Carl mumbled.

‘What, vases and stuff?’ said Paul. ‘Weird.’

‘It’s not weird at all. Carl’s got an amazing collection,’ I said. I thought of a way to impress him. ‘Similar pieces go for hundreds on eBay and yet he bought them for a couple of pounds ages ago.’

‘Really?’ said Paul. ‘I tried selling these little
pig money banks on eBay – someone said they were worth heaps, but the most someone offered me was five quid and it cost more than that to send the little beggars. I used to collect pigs when I was a little kid. Hey, Carl, I’ve got a glass pig. Would you like it? I’ll give it to you for your birthday present.’

‘Cool,’ said Carl.

‘That’s a bit of a cheapskate birthday present,’ said Miranda. ‘Hey, I’ve thought of the most brilliant birthday treat for you!’

I didn’t like the way she always tried to take things over.

‘Will you have a party, Carl?’ she asked.

‘Probably not.’

‘Yeah, you’re not really a party guy, are you? So let’s have an amazing birthday outing!’

‘We’ve already got something planned, just Carl and me,’ I said quickly.

Carl and I celebrated his birthday together, the two of us. There was usually a family meal but then Jules generally took us somewhere special. Last year we’d gone to the glass gallery in the V and A, magical rooms right at the very top of the museum with green glass steps and a glass balcony. Carl had performed a Fred Astaire-type tap dance all the way down the glass steps, ending with a high kick, a spin round, and then stretched his arms out in triumph while I clapped like crazy.

‘What have you got planned?’ said Miranda.

‘Oh,’ I said, stuck. I hadn’t come up with a
new idea yet. ‘Probably a museum. You’d be bored.’

‘I probably would. No, I’ve got a
much
better idea than a stuffy museum. We’ll go to Kew Gardens on one of their floodlight evenings.’

‘Gardens?’ said Carl. ‘Thanks, Miranda, but I don’t fancy that for my birthday.’

‘You will. They’ve got a Chihuly exhibition there.’

‘Oh wow!’ said Carl.

‘You what?’ said Paul.

‘Chihuly’s this amazing American guy – he makes these extraordinary glass flowers,’ said Miranda.

‘There’s this fantastic greeny-yellow gigantic whirly glass like thousands of snakes hanging in the entrance of the V and A. That’s Chihuly,’ said Carl.

‘How did you know about him?’ I asked Miranda.

She grinned. ‘I asked my dad. He’s a bit of a glass freak too. It’s settled, right? We’ll go on your birthday, next Friday night, yeah? You and me and Sylvie …’

Carl looked at Paul. ‘Are you coming too?’

‘Sure,’ said Paul.