Let's Get Lost (2 page)

Nods, grudging smiles, Dot still whimpering about conjunctivitis as I attempted to make her eyes a little less piggy with a couple of sweeps of eyeliner: I guess we were good to go.

I was right about the party.
El muy sucko
. It was wall-to-wall University students back for the start of the school year. As we trooped into the lounge with our carrier bag of clinking bottles, I actually heard one girl say to her friend, “So, I was all like ’Mummy, you don’t understand, I’m a free spirit.’ ” God, I loathe students. They’re so up themselves.

I separated from the others immediately because Ella had already spilled red wine over herself and none of us were going to get any sweet boy action if we clumped together. I snagged a bottle of the Sauvignon Blanc and wandered into the kitchen to find a corkscrew. There was the regulation group of people in there talking about some lame TV program because they had zero personalities and nothing else to bond over. This boy with a gross birthmark on his face tried to come on to me as I wrestled with the cork, but I made it perfectly clear that I was way out of his league and he called me a “stuck-up bitch” and went back to banging on about
Doctor Who
. As if I’d ever be interested in a port-stained geek.

Clutching the bottle in my hand, I moved through the party, taking it all in, listening to the
thud, thud, thud
of industrial techno and occasionally getting told to fuck off as I interrupted people getting off with each other or rolling joints like they were wild desperadoes living on the edge of the law.

It was really hard not to die from sheer boredom. There was a girl crying on the stairs because she’d had a row with her boyfriend; a couple getting horizontal on the sofa and a small group of spoddy boys standing in a puddle of their own drool watching them; a queue for the toilet that stretched across the landing; and someone throwing up in the sink. Just like every other party I’ve ever been to. I really needed to find some classier places to hang out.

There was a child safety gate across the stairs, but I climbed over it and sneaked up to the third floor.

Most of the doors were locked, but as I tried the last handle, it opened and I found myself in a junk room filled with boxes and crates. It smelled kind of funky, so I tugged up the stiff window and leaned out to take greedy gulps of the cold night air before I hauled myself up onto the windowsill and sat there with my legs dangling out, drinking the wine and wondering why I’d thought coming here was going to break life’s never-ending cycle of extreme suckitude.

I was about halfway down the bottle and pleasantly buzzed when the door behind me slammed against the wall. After I’d managed not to land with a splat in the front garden and break my spine in thirty different places, I peered over my shoulder into the dark room.

“Sorry. Didn’t mean to startle you,” said a slurred voice, and then the room was flooded with light from the single bulb that dangled precariously from a fraying cord. I put my hand up to shield my eyes.

“Thanks for nearly killing me,” I grumbled. “You’re not meant to be up here, anyway.”

“Neither are you,” he said, staggering toward me so I could get a good look at him. Hair. He had a lot of hair and a really big nose. Whatever. And why was he still talking? “I just fell over that gate. Wouldn’t have the gate if they wanted anyone in here.”

I shrugged and turned back to gaze at the sky so he could get a super-sized portion of cold shoulder.

Unfortunately, he was too drunk to notice.

“What are you doing?” he asked, coming up behind me. “I don’t think sitting on the sill is safe.”

I rolled my eyes and took a swig of the now lukewarm wine. “I’m just enjoying the quiet,” I said pointedly. “That was a hint, by the way, for you to either leave or shut the hell up.”

He shuffled away, then there was a creak as he sat down. “You’re really rude,” he mused, like stating the obvious was his life’s vocation.

“You’re really annoying,” I replied in a bored voice. “Feel free to piss off at any time.”

There was a gasp of outrage, then he finally shut up. I tried to concentrate on the feeling of the rough wall as I drummed my heels against it and wondered how many stars there were in the sky, but he’d killed the mood.

I twisted around so I could look at him. He was slumped on a rickety chair, staring right back at me. He had the most amazing eyes. They were the exact same shade of gentian blue that was my favorite color in my paint box when I still used to go to art class.

I think I must have been slightly drunk because I told him that, and he sat up suddenly and asked how my course was going.

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“I wish I’d decided to do the Foundation Art course, too,” he said mournfully. “I hate philosophy.”

“Blah, blah, blah,” I chanted, and took another mouthful of wine. “Earth to dickhead, you’ve got the wrong girl.”

“Can I have some of that?” he asked politely, because he was either way drunker than I thought or had skin like a rhinoceros. With a sigh, I leaned over and passed him the bottle. He had long fingers and the most bitten nails I’ve ever seen. “God, you’ve changed your hair,” he exclaimed. “It looks cool. Very hard-times chic.”

In the end, it seemed easier to go along with his addled thought processes. Also, being someone else, someone who hung with drunk boys with gentian blue eyes, was more fun than I’d had all week.

“I fancied a change,” I said casually, toying with the end of one of my bunches. “So, when was the last time we saw each other? It’s been a while.”

He furrowed his brow and twisted his lips. He had very pouty lips. “I think it was Glastonbury. You were with Dean. But you broke up, didn’t you?”

I hid a smile and shook my head. “Yeah. I dumped him. He was such a loser. Not very good in bed, either.” Then an awful thought struck me. “You and me? We’ve never done it, have we?”

He gave a sudden bark of laughter. “Jesus, Chloë! If we had, I’d be really offended that you didn’t remember. You’re in a weird mood tonight.”

“Guess I’ve had too much to drink, just like you,” I said carefully, and wondered who Chloë was. He seemed to like her.

“Hey! Do you remember when we got off with each other?” Gentian boy stretched out his legs and made no attempt to give me back the wine. He was wearing jeans and a beaten-up pair of Jack Purcells; the rubber on the soles was almost worn through. “You tasted really sweet and you said you’d been drinking coffee with lots of sugar in it, and I thought all kisses would be that sweet, but they weren’t.”

There was no stopping him. He went on and on about this party he’d been to with the mysterious Chloë and how they’d had too much to drink and ended up making out behind the sofa. He seemed very hung up about it.

In the end, all I needed to do was insert the odd “yeah” or “hmm” into the conversation to keep him happy. He wasn’t going to be winning prizes for academic excellence any time soon.

It was getting cold, so I closed the window, then decided to get the wine back before he drank it all.

“. . . and you said it was complicated because of Dean, but he was seeing Molly by then, anyway . . .”

As I walked toward him, he leaned back so he could gaze up at me with a slightly dazed expression on his face.

“Give me back my wine,” I ordered in my most imperious voice, which is pretty damn imperious. It’s, like, imperious to the power of a hundred. I gestured at the bottle, but he suddenlyseized my hand and pulled me onto his lap. It sounds like a really suave maneuver, but in actual fact, I landed in an ungainly heap on top of him.

I struggled to get up, but his hands were clamped around my waist. “I forgot how pretty you are,” he murmured, and then he tried to kiss me.

“Hang on!” I yelped, and then his hand stroked the back of my neck and really it had been so long since someone touched me. That’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it. I wound my arms around his neck and bumped my nose against his as he tried to capture my lips.

“Just one little kiss,” he begged, and he shut his eyes. Then I kissed him.

I’d never really put the moves on a boy unless it involved spinning the bottle and two minutes locked in a stinky cupboard under someone’s stairs. Usually I just suffered some guy lunging at me and shoving his tongue in my mouth at the same time that he tried to shove his hand down my top. But his lips were so soft as I cupped his face and planted tiny little kisses against that pouty, defenseless bottom lip of his. I bit it gently and his eyes snapped open, then he was kissing me back fiercely. But no matter how desperate the feel of his mouth on mine, his hand was still painting circles along my neck.

After a while, we came up for air and he gasped, “I could die from your kisses.” He was really weird.

“Maybe you’re better off dead then,” I told him softly, and he kissed me again. I didn’t mind it when our tongues got involved, usually it’s pretty rank, but he didn’t try to do a spin cycle in my mouth. He just

stroked the tip of his tongue along mine and one of his hands crept up to tilt my head back . . .

“Isabel! God, there you are, I’ve been looking for you for ages.”

I took my mouth away from Gentian Boy long enough to say, “Huh?” at Nancy, who was standing in front of me with her hands on her hips.

“We’re going. This party’s dead,” Nancy grizzled, and then realized that I was wrapped around someone. “If you can tear yourself away, that is.”

Gentian boy seemed in no hurry to let me go. His hand tightened around my hip as I tried to disentangle myself, while Nancy stood there, looking like she’d sucked down a whole bag of lemons.

“Let me up,” I hissed, and he blinked a couple of times before relaxing the death grip.

“Who’s your friend?” Nancy demanded, edging toward the door in case the boy made any sudden moves. Like, he’d look twice at her.

I realized that there wasn’t an agony aunt alive who could give you advice on how to handle the correct etiquette when you’ve been sucking face with a boy you don’t know who thinks you’re someone else.

“Nobody,” I muttered, running a hand over my hair to smooth it down.

“I’m Smith,” he supplied, pulling at his faded green T-shirt. “Where do you know Chloë from?”

Nancy flailed her arms, making her bangles rattle furiously. “Who the hell is Chloë? She’s Isabel, you idiot. Jesus, I can’t believe you’d get off with my best friend and not even get her name right. Wanker!”

I stared at the floorboards, and hoped some handy portal would open up and transport me to another dimension where I hadn’t just strung along some drunken boy with beautiful eyes simply to get some touch. Sometime between the stairs and here, I’d obviously turned into a ginormous slut.

When I eventually summoned up the courage to look at him, Smith, which was just the most stupid-ass name ever and his parents must have really hated him, was looking bewildered. But when he saw me glance at him, this sudden grin lit him up from the inside.

“Oh, Isabel,” he whispered so that I was the only one who could hear him. “You’ve got some explaining to do.”

But I didn’t. I just grabbed Nancy’s hand and dragged her the hell out of there.

2

I’m not too clear on what happened after that. I had a really vague memory of being sick in a toilet that I didn’t recognize, then wiping my mouth on one of those tragic crinoline ladies that sit on top of loo rolls so no one gets offended by the sight of naked Kleenex Velvet. Whatevs.

Right now I was curled up on the doormat with my keys still in my hand, which really made no sense at all. Though you’ve got to respect a finely tuned homing instinct—but I guess crawling up the stairs to my own bed, was just one step too far.

It was a superhuman effort to lift my wrist so I could squint at my watch (it was just past two-thirty), which nearly killed me, and I collapsed back on the floor with a tiny little sigh. I was tempted to stay there for what was left of the night because it felt like someone had sandpapered the inside of my head.

But I could imagine the sour scene that would unfold if Dad came down and found me curled up against the draft excluder, so I crawled up the stairs, thought about getting undressed, and decided to collapse face down on my bed instead. All that alcohol and puking had really taken it out of me—someone could have started drilling for oil underneath my pillow and I’d barely have stirred.

It’s the summer that Felix was born so I’m seven and she’s wearing her white summer dress with
the roses on it, stretched tight over her swollen belly.

The sand shifts beneath our feet as she holds my hand and leads me down to the water’s edge.

I’ve got my red bucket with me, and every now and again, we stop so I can crouch down and pick
up a shell or a stone, worn smooth and shiny by the relentless lapping of the waves, and drop it on
the growing pile with a satisfying crash.

“What a clever little girl you are, Belle,” she says approvingly, and I dig into the depth of the

bucket and pull out the prettiest shell, an orange periwinkle, and place it in her palm. I never
speak in these dreams, but she does all the talking for us. “Thank you, baby,” she murmurs, and
then she straightens up and looks out to sea, a hand over her eyes to shield them from the glare of
the sun, her dark hair glinting in the brilliant light so it almost looks alive.

“You stay here, Belle,” she tells me, dropping my hand and pressing down on my shoulders, so I
plop down on the sand and watch as she begins to wander toward the water, her gaze on the
ground, searching for something.

The tide’s started to come in, and she doesn’t seem to notice it covering her feet with its frilly
white edges, and I want to call out. Want to warn her, but when I open my mouth, nothing
happens and I can’t move, either. All I can do is watch her wade into the depths so the skirt of her
dress billows around her so there are roses floating on top of the water.

My bucket is filling up with tears and it’s getting hard to see her through blurry, sticky eyes—just
the top of her head bobbing on the water remains. I scrub at my eyes with my fists, and when I
can see again, she’s gone and I can scream now, even though there’s no one to hear, no one to
help, and Ican’t stop the noise, can’t stop screaming until I’m hauled to my feet and he’s shaking
me hard.