Out of My Depth (13 page)

Look at me: my life is held together by a fraying thread. One day soon, it’s going to snap.

She was staring at the ceiling when she heard footsteps on the landing, followed by a quiet knock on her door.

‘Hello?’ she called.

The door opened and Susie’s head appeared. She was smiling. Amanda heaved herself upright and forced a smile in return. Susie came in and sat on the end of the bed.

‘Hello,’ she said, happily. ‘I couldn’t wait to see you. Is everything all right?’

‘It’s fine,’ Amanda told her. ‘Susie, you look amazing. And all this is . . . amazing, too.’

‘Thanks. I can’t believe you’ve got a family. It seems so grown-up.’ She looked around and laughed. ‘How did it come to this?’

Amanda wasn’t in the mood. ‘The years passed. It happens. What about Izzy?’

Susie was cautious. ‘She seems very happy with motherhood.’

‘Mmm. Don’t you think she’s changed, though?’

‘Well, of course she looks different. She’s grown up.’

Amanda was longing to be malicious, and she was disappointed. ‘We all have,’ she said shortly. And Tamsin’s grown into her looks, just like her mother used to say she would.’

As soon as she mentioned Mrs Grey, she regretted it. She looked away, but heard Susie’s sharp intake of breath. Susie stood up and walked to the window.

‘Hasn’t she just?’ she said. ‘She seems happy.’

Amanda snorted. ‘Lucky her.’

‘You’re happy, though, surely?’

Amanda stopped herself rolling her eyes. ‘People always think that if you’re married with kids you have to be happy. Ridiculous, considering the divorce statistics.’

Susie raised her eyebrows. ‘Sorry,’ she said, sounding offended. ‘What, are you not happy?’

‘Yes, yes, perfectly happy, thanks. I don’t need to ask about you, do I?’

‘Ask if you like.’

They stared at each other. Amanda was not sure what to say. She wondered whether she was supposed to be apologising. If that was what Susie was waiting for, she was going to be disappointed. Susie seemed about to say something, but thought better of it.

‘Right,’ she said. ‘I’d better get on. See you at seven.’

Amanda smiled. ‘Sure. Looking forward to it.’

She lay back on the pillows, curiously deflated. This was not how it should have been. She listened to the hum of voices downstairs. She could hear the high-pitched whiny voice of Izzy’s Sam, and Izzy’s lower tones coaxing him to do something. There was a sudden burst of female laughter. She curled around herself and squeezed her eyes shut. She was not a part of this gathering. She did not want to join in. Once she was on the terrace in her dress with a drink in her hand, everything would be all right. She closed her eyes and tried to think of nothing.

Amanda sat by the window in the sixth-form common room, and stared down at the ground below She was tingling with her secret; excited by the gulf between what she ought to do and what she knew she was going to do. She looked without interest at the teachers’ cars and a couple of token borders with wilting pansies and encroaching weeds. There was a light drizzle which had already made the tarmac shiny. Usually, this was excruciatingly depressing. She scanned what she could see of the sky. There was a patch of cloud which was just a little bit brighter than the others, a clue that the sun was behind it. That was bloody it, as far as daylight was concerned. Usually, February was her worst month.

Dieting was all right in the summer. She could pretty much do it — shorts and swimming costumes were an excellent motivator. In summer she was hugely aware of her pot belly sticking out in front of her, and her arse dangling along behind, and so she could drum up the motivation to avoid food for days at a time. Winter was different, and February was the worst of all. She still had her Christmas fat, and it was freezing and wet, and she could hide her shameful lumps and bumps under navy blue jumpers and crisp pink shirts. Today, however, she simply did not care. She unwrapped a Mars bar and carefully bit the chocolate off its top as she turned her gaze to the builders who were working on the new block of the junior school. She could only just see his outline, but that was enough to make her feel very, very strange.

Amanda had not even hinted at it to her best friends, but she was tingling with sex. She had a boyfriend, but he bored her to tears. Every day this week, the builder, who was only young, and whose name she didn’t know, had singled her out on her way past. On Monday, he had watched her walking by, and when she was nearly gone, he whistled and said, All right, lovely?’ She knew that the proper thing to do was to ignore him, but she hadn’t wanted to, so she turned and flashed him her biggest, most suggestive smile. He was ready for her on Tuesday.

‘Hello again, darling!’ he had shouted, and she stopped, just for a moment, and looked at him, and said, ‘Hello,’ before walking on.

Today was Wednesday. This morning, he had been braver. ‘Hey, love, what’s your name?’ he said, jumping down from his scaffolding and walking towards her.

‘Amanda,’ she told him, hearing the crisp poshness of her voice. She caught her breath. She thought that this was probably her sexual awakening. How weird that it was with this scruffy builder, standing outside school, in the rain.

‘Hi, Amanda.’ They smiled shyly. ‘Want to get a drink with me later?’

She knew she should have said no. She ought to have gone straight to Miss Higgins’s office and reported him. He would have been sacked on the spot.

She was meeting him at half past six in the centre of town. She had not yet decided what story to spin to her parents, but she knew she’d get away with something.

The day passed agonisingly slowly. Suzii asked, a couple of times, what was wrong. Amanda almost told her at lunchtime, but she changed her mind and said she was depressed at being fat. That was a story Suzii was never going to question, and they wandered off together in a huddle, to talk about the Hip and Thigh Diet, Callanetics, and something Suzii had read an article about called food combining. They agreed to support each other and give it a try. First of all, though, they had to find out what it was, and Suzii couldn’t quite remember where she’d read about it. It might have been in her mother’s
Good Housekeeping
. It sounded unlikely to Amanda that eating protein separately to carbohydrates, or something like that, could work, but science was a strange thing and she would give it a go.

‘Doing anything later?’ Tamsin asked, in the middle of the afternoon.

Amanda was nervous. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Want to wander into town after? Mum’s got a staff meeting. Thought I’d look at the shops and get a train home.’

Amanda considered this. ‘I’m meeting someone at half six by Central Station. But I’ve got to go home first. So I guess not — sorry.’

‘Meeting Julian?’

She hesitated. ‘I might chuck Julian.’

Tamsin was brisk. ‘Good plan. He’s too drippy for you. Giving him the elbow tonight?’

‘Might do.’

They headed off in different directions, Tamsin to economics, and Amanda to the library, where she spent her study period staring at raindrops on the window, doodling patterns in her rough book, and gazing randomly at the spine of a book on a shelf, called
Physics for the Inquiring Mind
. As far as she was aware, that book had not moved from its spot on that shelf in all the years she had been at the school. She walked over to it, purposefully, and took it down. It smelt musty, and the pages were yellow. The last time it was taken out of the library, it had been due back on 24 January 1974. Clearly, the physics department of Lodwell’s did not nurture many inquiring minds, and this did not surprise Amanda in the least.

Eventually, it was the end of the school day. Amanda lived in Llandaff, so she rushed home to shower and change. She told her mother she was going out to History Revision Club at Anne-Marie’s house.

‘Right,’ said her mother, who was just in from work herself, and who, Amanda knew, would welcome the quiet house to do her Open University essay. Are you being fed?’

‘Yep.’

‘Sure?’

‘Anne-Marie’s Mum’s ordering us all pizzas.’

‘Take a tenner from my purse to chuck into the pot. Have a good time. Don’t be late.’

Amanda changed into her black underwear and eyed herself critically in the mirror. In a way she was glad to be tall, because fat was more obvious on short people. She had read that in magazines. It did, however, make it almost impossible for her to go below nine stone, and if she didn’t watch what she ate all the bloody time, she would easily top eleven. ‘Eleven stone’ was the phrase that struck most horror into her heart, and for now she was edging uneasily around nine stone two. She decided to cover up her bulges quickly, before they made her cry. She was only going for a drink with the builder. He was not going to get close enough to be disgusted by her fat. She dressed in a bright blue miniskirt that was made from some felty material that seemed to make her legs look all right, and thick black tights (slimming), and a dark blue Benetton sweater, tight over a camisole. She wished she owned a pair of knee-high boots, but she didn’t, and so she decided on black court shoes with a tiny heel. She let her hair loose, and flicked it over sideways, applying liberal amounts of gel to keep it there. Thick foundation, bright blue eyeliner, light blue eyeshadow, and pink frosted lipstick followed, and she was ready to go. She listened for her mother. When a mutter of ‘Oh, botheration’ suggested that Mum was safely tucked into Amanda’s parents’ bedroom, Amanda bolted for the door. ‘Bye, Mum!’ she yelled, and slammed it shut behind her. Even Amanda’s mother, the most trusting parent in the known universe, might have had suspicions aroused by the sight of her teenage daughter heading to History Revision Club in a tiny skirt and full makeup.

He was there, outside Central Station, just as they had agreed.

Amanda observed him for a second. He should have been the sort of man she avoided. He was wearing a button-down shirt, pale green, and aftershave. There were creases ironed into his trousers. His light brown hair was spiked up a little on top — like Susie’s, she thought.

She normally laughed at people like him. Yet, when she saw him, her stomach leapt into her ribcage and she folded her arms so he wouldn’t see she was shaking.

His face lit up with a huge smile, and Amanda felt herself smiling back with the same delight. This was freaking her out a bit; she had never felt anything like it in her life.

‘I don’t even know your name,’ she told him, tingling all over.

‘Dai. Amanda, you look superb.’

‘Thanks, Dai.’ Her smile creased her face in a way that never normally happened.

‘Do you want to jump in the van?’ He indicated it with his head. ‘I know a good place for us to get a drink.’

She adored sitting up in the front of his white van. She felt like his posh girl, his Uptown Girl. She liked having a Bit of Rough. She couldn’t stop looking at him and smiling. His face was almost handsome, with the beginnings of laughter lines. His eyes were dark, and she longed for him to turn them back on her. He navigated the city centre expertly, and drove north to Fairwater, a part of Cardiff she had never visited, even though it bordered Llandaff, where she lived.

‘Where are you from, Amanda?’ he asked. ‘Not round here, I bet.’

‘Llandaff. Not far.’

He laughed. ‘Course you are. Hope you don’t mind me bringing you here. It’s just that here’s where I know.’

‘Not at all. It’s interesting to see another part of town.’

‘Interesting!’ He looked at her again, his eyes amused, boring into her. ‘It’s that all right.’

They sat inside a large, smoky pub. Dai waved to a few people, but he didn’t talk to any of them. He bought Amanda a gin and tonic, and then a vodka and tonic, and then three pints of lager in quick succession. She chatted to him and giggled at him, and found herself leaning towards him. He put an arm round her and her stomach flipped over. For dinner, they had two packets of salt and vinegar crisps, and then they went out to the van, which Dai had parked, with some foresight, in the far corner of the car park. He unlocked the back doors and jumped inside, grinning wickedly and motioning her in with his head.

‘Cleaned it out for you earlier,’ he said, ‘just in case.’

‘Cheeky sod,’ she retorted, and jumped up after him. He closed the doors carefully, grabbed Amanda around her waist, and pulled her close. She kissed him, wrapped her legs around him, and then joyously, if not entirely comfortably, lost her virginity to him, as the van rocked with abandon in the corner of the car park. For the first time in Amanda’s life, she completely forgot to be ashamed of her body.

Jake sat on his bed. Freya sat on hers.

‘Action Man!’ Jake said. He widened his eyes.

‘Barbie!’ said Freya. She tried not to smile.

They looked at each other and laughed. ‘It’s because she hasn’t got any children,’ Jake said. ‘She doesn’t know that Action Man and Barbie are for, like, five-year-olds. I quite like this guy though,’ he said, picking up the Action Man figure from his pillow.

‘Maybe she’s had other children staying who were younger than us,’ suggested Freya, undressing her yoga Barbie.