Out of My Depth (26 page)

This part of the garden felt as if no one ever went into it. There were a few trees, so it was nice and shady. The grass was scratchy on her ankles. It was completely silent. There was a ditch on her left, which ran all along the side of the garden. Past the ditch was a huge field of very high plants. Susie had said it was maize, but until she looked closely, Freya hadn’t realised that meant corn on the cob. She thought it was funny how something as small as corn needed a plant that was twice as tall as she was to grow on.

The plants were far enough apart from each other for her to walk into the field. She smiled, and ran all the way across the garden, to the pool, to fetch Jakey.

Jake was treading water in the deep end while Dad was timing him on his watch.

‘Six minutes!’ Dad said. Jake said nothing. His mouth kept dipping below the surface.

‘Hey,’ Freya said, urgently, checking to see whether Mum was coming through the trees yet. ‘Mum’s mad. Let’s go!’

She saw her father’s face fall. ‘Mad about what?’ he asked wretchedly.

‘Sorry, Dad. I told her about stopping maths and tap and modern, and she went crazy. Come on, Jake. Let’s go. This way.’

Jake grabbed the side of the pool. He looked pleased with himself.

‘It’s lunchtime, isn’t it?’ he said.

‘We’ll just have a wander round the garden. I know some good exploring. Then we’ll go in for lunch after the others. That means we’ll be really hungry. And I know you pigged out on pain au chocolat at the market, because I did too.’

Jake climbed out of the pool and dripped water over to his towel. He quickly changed into his shorts as modestly as he could. ‘OK. Let’s go. See you, Dad.’

They hurried off together. Freya led Jake to the best place she had seen for getting into the maize field. They leapt the ditch, side by side.

During the Easter holidays, Izzy drew up meticulous revision timetables, read as much of Alexander Pope’s oeuvre as she could, and busied herself on numerous side projects to make her forget about her A levels. She felt supercharged all the time. Everything was about to happen. She was going to leave school. The magical last day of term shimmered on the near horizon. If she managed to get three Bs in her exams, she would be going to Sheffield to study English. She was going to be a student. The excitement of it all propelled her through revision and clarinet practice, through the mechanics of preparing for a music history paper and a French oral. She wanted to be busy all day long. She decided to make herself a dress for the ball, because she certainly couldn’t afford to buy one, and nobody else was likely to make one for her. It was surprising how many of the girls at school were suddenly able to produce mothers or grandmothers who were apparently able to whip up yards of netting and satin and tulle into a bona fide gown. Izzy’s mother didn’t even bother to laugh when she asked her.

‘Of course not, darling,’ she said, frowning out of the window, her mind clearly elsewhere. ‘We’ll give a contribution if you like.’

Izzy had taken the contribution and bought herself a Vogue pattern and a lot of soft burgundy stuff. She had no idea how to sew, and was scared of the old sewing machine that lived in a corner of a box room, so she was stitching it all by hand. She listened to her set work, a cassette of Haydn quartets, while she sewed, trying to remember to keep her stitches tiny. This was an interesting project. The dress she was making was going to be skin tight, but long, with narrow straps at the shoulders and an extremely long slit up the back. She was, she hoped, making it to fit her curves perfectly, although she was a little worried about that part of it. Still, she had stood in her underwear and made Tamsin take all the relevant measurements three times, and she had personally written them all down and chalked the outline onto the back of the material.

She had no idea why she was bothering. Other schools, even private schools, had discos. The fact that Lodwell’s had a ball instead crystallised everything she hated about the place. It was pretentious and elitist. She had gone last year, drunk too much, snogged someone and been sick, first in the loos, and then in the bushes outside City Hall. Last year she had worn a black dress from Warehouse, and it had been fine. Somehow, her new dress was connected to her new identity, as Izzy the English student. When she went to university, she was going to be someone a little bit new. Izzy who makes her own clothes was an appealing persona.

Tamsin hated the ball, and Izzy could understand that. She hated it too, and if, like Tamsin, she hadn’t been interested in dancing or snogging, she would have refused to go. Tamsin had to go because Mrs Grey was in charge, and she claimed, ‘I can’t sit at home watching Saturday night telly while my mum’s at the fucking school disco! I have to pretend to be normal.’

Izzy sat listening to the quartet, mentally noting the recapitulation of the theme and picturing the notes on the score. It was nearly lunchtime. After lunch she was going to start re-reading D.H. Lawrence. Sons and Lovers was her least favourite of the A-level texts, which was why she was forcing herself to do it when she would much rather be going over Othello or The Rape of the Lock. She pushed her hair back behind her ears and down her back, annoyed at the way it kept sticking to the material, and getting tangled up in the thread. If she was braver, she would cut it all off. It was far too long and it annoyed her. It took her hours to wash and dry it, and she was always having to brush it through. It had recently occurred to her that all Susie did to her hair was to run some gel through with her fingertips, and stand it up on end. Then she was ready. Amanda applied various styling products liberally, close to her scalp, so it held its position when she flicked it into place, and blow-dried it to within an inch of its life. And Tamsin did nothing whatsoever to her hair. Izzy tried to imagine what it would be like to lose her mane. She tried to picture herself with a jaw-length bob. Her hair was thick, and it would probably look quite good short.

She could not do it. Her hair was herself. She knew that everybody would think it was a shame if she cut it off, and she knew for certain that every single person she had ever met would sidle over to her and ask whether she regretted it.

She heard footsteps on the stairs. She hoped it might be Tamsin or Suzii or Amanda, but she knew, from the heaviness of the tread, that it was actually Jasper. She was fed up with Jasper. He was funny and nice and adorably polite to her parents, but Amanda’s grand passion with Dai had thrown Izzy’s little relationship into stark relief. She did not particularly fancy Jasper, and although he was a good friend to her, she was bored of their relationship. She was already thinking about men she might be going to meet at Sheffield. She created them, sometimes, as she lay in bed. Men with dark hair and round glasses and baggy jumpers. Men who liked books and opera and cooking.

‘Hello, Iz,’ he said, poking his head round her bedroom door. Izzy looked up and smiled. Jasper had shiny hair that almost reached his shoulders, and this was what had drawn her to him. She’d thought he had an interesting face, but now she was not so sure.

‘Come in,’ she said. ‘I’m sewing.’

‘So I see. You really know how to party. Nice music.’

‘Thanks. It’s the recapitulation.’

‘My favorite band!’

‘Shut up.’

‘Are they in the top ten at the moment?’

‘In this house they are.’

Jasper flung himself down on Izzy’s bed and looked at her suggestively. That was why she was going to have to finish with him. She wanted to have wild abandoned sex like Amanda and Dai. She didn’t want it to be sore and resentful, like Suzii and Julian. She knew that the issue was at the very top of Jasper’s mind, and she knew that she was soon going to have to confront it.

‘Iz,’ he said.

Her heart sank. She didn’t want the confrontation to take place this instant. ‘Jass?’

‘We’re eighteen.’

Aren’t we just?’

And we’ve been seeing each other for quite a while. And I, like, well, I’m pretty sure I, like, love you and everything. You’re the greatest girl I’ve met in my life and you’re, well, you’re really beautiful. I think we should maybe think about, you know, taking our relationship to the next level. You know?’

Izzy looked at him and smiled. She felt maternal towards him, which was probably not good. That little speech had not been easy, and he had done it well.

‘I’m not sure,’ she said, and waited to see how he responded.

‘Your friends, though — they must have done it by now?’

‘My friends? I don’t really base those kinds of decisions on what they’re up to.’

‘Have they, though?’

‘Well, yes, Amanda and Suzii have. Not Tamsin.’

‘No surprises there.’

She looked at him. His hair was flopping over his face, and she remembered her six-month crush on him when he was just a boy she used to see across the pub. She had been smitten, had written ‘Isabelle Wilson’ over and over again, in different types of handwriting. She had dreamed about his glossy hair and the soft stubble on his chin. She had loved the granddad shirts he wore. But now they had been together for six months, and she was bored, and the shirts had got a bit predictable. She was determined not to screw him for the sake of it, because it would be the path of least resistance. Izzy was a romantic, and she wanted it to be true love.

‘Jasper,’ she said, with some trepidation. ‘I’m very fond of you, you know that. These last six months have been great.’

‘Seven months.’

‘Yeah. But, you know, because we’ve spoken about this before, that I want to save, you know, sex, for a time when it really feels right, when it feels like the only thing to do.’

He stared at her. Consternation, she thought. That was the word.

‘Doesn’t it feel right?’ he said quietly. ‘Doesn’t it feel like the only thing to do?’

‘No. Sorry, but no.’

She looked at him, and he looked at her with eyes that had once made her melt, and a sudden impulse urged her to change her mind, to strip off her baggy cotton trousers and her tight black T-shirt and present herself to her boyfriend. It was what, she was sure, her parents imagined she was doing. She could be married, could be a mother of several children by now. There was something geeky about an eighteen-year-old virgin.

But she did not do it. Instead, she watched Jasper get up, give her a last, pleading look, and leave the room without another word. She heard his footsteps on the stairs and then, a minute or so later, she heard the front door slam. She imagined him getting on his bike and cycling back home, to Penarth, calling her terrible names under his breath. She supposed they were finished. She was sad, but she was excited at the same time. Jasper had definitely not been The One. In six months, if she worked hard, she would be in Sheffield. Unencumbered.

She changed tapes, putting Othello into her cassette player, and she picked up her sewing again.

Patrick knew he had to find Amanda and get the row over with. He started walking towards the house, but when he saw his wife on the terrace, leaning her face in towards Tamsin in her most aggressive fashion, he paused. He hoped she would see him by the trees and come over to him, taking the row away from their friends and keeping it private. But she just carried on arguing with Tamsin, who was clearly holding her own. Mistake, he thought. He tried to convey it telepathically to Tamsin. Don’t argue with her, he urged. Fighting back makes it worse. Tamsin didn’t know Amanda, so she didn’t know that the only way to defuse her was to capitulate, to tell her she was right, to cave in entirely.

He walked as slowly as he could towards them, dreading the moment when his wife would turn on him.

‘And what about you?’ Amanda was yelling. ‘You were the one who was supposed to be rescuing the African orphans! Where does a nice apartment in Sydney fit into that?’ She saw him coming and barely paused for breath. ‘Oh, and here he comes,’ she shouted. ‘That’s right. Saunter over looking mortified. Come on. Now you can join the fucking frog chorus telling me what a terrible mother I am. Because I want my children to do well. For Christ’s sake! If you have to talk about me behind my back, try not to do it in front of my seven-year-old daughter, would you? Patrick! You tosser! You undermine me constantly. You take bugger all interest in anything either of them do, but when someone who has no children of her own-’ she thrust her face into Tamsin’s — ‘when someone who knows nothing whatsoever about it decides to weigh in with her great expertise about the kids’ extracurricular activities, you instantly agree with her and tell them — tell them! — they can do whatever they like. Jesus!’ She turned and stormed off.

Patrick took a couple of steps after her, then faltered. Instead, he turned to Tamsin, trying to gauge how upset she was.

‘I’m sorry about all that,’ he told her, awkwardly. He was excited, partly by Amanda’s anger, and partly by being close to Tamsin. ‘I seem to be constantly apologising to you. But I really am sorry. It was a chance comment from Freya that sparked that off. It’s my fault. Amanda’s right, I shouldn’t make promises to the kids without consulting her first.’

To Patrick’s secret pleasure, Tamsin touched his arm. ‘Don’t be silly,’ she said. ‘It’s not your fault. You were perfectly reasonable. Amanda doesn’t seem very . . .’ She looked at him, clearly unsure whether to continue.