The Ice Cream Girls (13 page)

‘I told him, it’s his own fault,’ Evan mumbles.

‘That was supportive of you.’

‘Well, it’s true. You treat someone like a second-class citizen, you say to her things like, “I’m the man so you have to do what I tell you” and what do you expect? I’ve always said he should treat June better. Acting like she should be grateful to have him is what got Max where he is. Why would she tell him the truth about herself if he’s being that disrespectful?’

‘Maybe it had nothing to do with how he treats her.’ I cannot
believe
my secret is making me stick up for an eejit like Max. ‘Maybe it’s just that she was scared of losing him so she kept it to herself. I mean, we know she loves him, why else would she put up with him? And if she loves him, then she knows telling him about her past might ruin things. Maybe she thought keeping quiet was the best way to keep her relationship going.’

‘Maybe. He’s gutted, though. He reckons she only told him because she’s planning on leaving him. Which makes him feel worse because she obviously won’t care what he says because she’s going anyway. He hasn’t actually talked to her, you understand. He hasn’t found out why she lied or why she’s suddenly told him, he’s just not talked to her. Idiot. Especially when he doesn’t want her to leave. He’s gutted.’

‘I’ll bet he is.’

Evan swigs his beer, and I marvel at the arc of his profile from his forehead to his chin, how beautiful he is, how sometimes I fear that he is too good for me. I don’t deserve him. I don’t deserve him, I don’t deserve this life. ‘You know what he said after I said it was his own fault?’

‘What?’

‘He said it to me and Teggie, actually. He said we should watch our other halves. Cos women are devious and we never know what they’re hiding.’

‘That’s when Teggie said I was right, and that it was all his own fault and he was a fuckwit. I said he could sleep in the spare room till it all blew over, if he wanted.’

‘You
what
?’

‘It’s OK, he said no. He doesn’t like being away from home too long in case he comes back to find her gone. All this has only shown him how much he loves her.’

‘Revelations can do that,’ I say.

‘Too much drama,’ Evan says. ‘Just be honest and then there’s no revelations and no drama.’

‘It’s not always easy to be one hundred per cent honest one hundred per cent of the time,’ I say.

‘Yeah, maybe. Hang on, how did this conversation start? We were talking about Vee maybe having a boyfriend and now we’re on to honesty. That’s some ground we’ve covered in the space of five minutes. Do you want a beer?’ He stands up to leave the room.

I shake my head, I don’t want a beer. I want to go back to the start of this conversation and see, for the first time in months and months, the best window of opportunity to tell him sitting open and have the chance to climb through it – not watch as another thing slowly closes it and then welds it shut again.

‘Come on now, be honest, you do want a beer, don’t you?’ Evan says. ‘Come on, tell me the truth.’

I shake my head again, smiling before he leaves.

‘OK,’ I whisper. ‘I’ll be honest. Once upon a time I was arrested and tried for murder. I was tried for murder and I almost went to prison.’

poppy

I’m still having trouble sleeping. Getting through a night without waking up, wondering where the noise has gone, is still impossible.

Laying here in the relative dark, I’m constantly bombarded with pieces of the past; memories of Marcus and how he did this to me. They fall from nowhere on to my mind, and play themselves out whenever they hit.

‘Wow.’

That was the first thing he ever said to me.

He looked me over with those eyes as big as saucers, as clear, blue and deep as the sea after a storm, and said that one word.

Sitting on the park bench, eating an ice cream – a 99, my favourite – I had not thought anyone would notice me. Let alone someone like him. My mouth dried up as my heart started to thump too loud in my chest and ears. It was exactly like I read about in
Jackie
and
Blue Jeans
and
My Guy
and
Photo Love
. Exactly. My heart was racing, my head was all fuzzy, my knees definitely felt weak, and my mouth was dry. The best-looking boy in the whole world had just spoken to me and I thought I was going to melt.

The girls in the stories I read would know what to do, what to say, but I couldn’t remember anything that they said to the boys they liked. How they got him to keep talking to them. So I stared at him.

‘I’ve never seen anyone make eating ice cream seem so sensual.’ He put his head to the side, then gave me a small smile. He was better looking than Don Johnson and Michael J. Fox, and loads more gorgeous than the boys in my magazines. What was that word they used sometimes? Sexy. That was exactly what he was: sexy. ‘You really look like you’re enjoying that.’ His smile spread across his face sprinkling tingles, like a million trillion little stars, all over my body.

I was aware, of course, that my tongue was hanging out; I’d been about to lick my ice cream when he spoke to me, so I’d frozen with my tongue there for him to see. ‘It’s the thing you do with your tongue,’ he said. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone do that.’ More smiles from him, more tingles for me. ‘You’re obviously special.’

He reached up, ran his hand through his blond-brown hair and smiled some more. His smile was bright, and soft, and friendly, and everything good in the world. It was perfect. He was perfect. Like no one I’d ever met.

‘I’ll see you around?’ he said.

I slowly nodded when I realised it was a question, not just a thing to say to someone at the end of a conversation. I still had my tongue hanging out when he threw another smile at me before walking away.

I lie in the dark, in the room from the eighties, and another memory bomb explodes in my mind.

I hung around the park at the same time every day for nearly two weeks before I saw him again. He just happened to be walking through and his face creased up into that beautiful smile when he saw me on the same bench – this time with an ice cream and a book. It’d got boring after the first time, waiting there for two hours, just in case.

We saw each other in the park a few more times, just talking about nothing in particular: he told me he was a teacher, he asked me where I went to school, and when I told him he said he’d taught supply there a few times and vaguely remembered me. We just talked and talked, until one day, three weeks later, he handed me a piece of paper.

I looked down and on it was scrawled a phone number.

‘Ring me,’ he said. ‘Anytime. If you need help with your school work, or even if you want to just have a chat.’ He got up, looked around and then gently stroked my cheek while smiling down at me. ‘I’d really like to hear from you.’

And then he was walking away without looking back. I stared at the number, knowing I was going to call him the very next day. Even though he mentioned that he had an ex-girlfriend called Serena who wouldn’t leave him alone, I knew I had to call him. I stroked every single digit on the page, imagining they were somehow connected to him. Slowly I lifted the piece of paper and pressed my lips against it, imagining I was kissing him. I had to call him. I just had to. I was completely and utterly in love with him, so I had no choice, I had to call him.

And another.

‘It’s not serious between us.’ Marcus was telling me about Serena. He’d say this a lot – every time I’d been to his house he mentioned her in some way. I had seen her once: I’d arrived half an hour early to see him, and had spotted her leaving. She was glamorous and gorgeous and all the things I wasn’t. Tall, and well dressed and completely confident. I was surprised that I hadn’t noticed her that day in the park, and I was even more surprised that he’d look twice at me when he had her. Not that anything had happened between us. We were just friends, nothing more. Heartbreakingly, nothing more. ‘I stay with her because she’s quite vulnerable.’ She hadn’t looked vulnerable when I saw her, but I didn’t say that. He didn’t know that I’d been so excited to see him that I’d arrived early that one time, and had spotted her. I had a feeling he wouldn’t like it – it would seem a bit like spying on him – so I hadn’t told him. Which meant I definitely couldn’t tell him that she didn’t look vulnerable to me. ‘I don’t know what she’d do to herself if I dumped her. I’d never forgive myself if she took a load of pills or something. That’s what she said she’d do if I ever thought about leaving her. She’s trapped me.’

Poor man
, I thought. I reached out and touched his arm, just to let him know I was there. He was so brave, having to take care of someone who was that unstable. He reached out and cupped my face in his big strong hand. I always felt so safe with him. Safe and wanted – I’d never felt like that with anyone. Being with my dad made me feel safe, but this was different. This was love. The kind of love that I’d longed and longed for, that I read about and dreamed about. This was it, true love.

‘You’re such a good friend,’ he said, staring straight into my eyes. I went all bubbly inside – that always happened whenever he looked at me like that. ‘I don’t know how I’d get through all this without you.’

I managed to pull up the corners of my mouth into a smile but only just. I felt like I was drowning. I couldn’t catch my breath properly, my head was buzzing and swirling, my body was trembling. He could probably feel me shaking under his hand. He’d probably felt it every time he touched me because that’s what happened.

‘You make everything worthwhile,’ he whispered.

I stopped breathing.

‘When I’m with you, I feel like I can do anything.’

That’s how he made me feel. When I was with him, I was pretty and funny and clever. Not having many friends at school meant nothing. Not really getting on with my mum wasn’t important. When I was with him I had everything I needed. And he was saying that he felt the same way about me. I did that for him. He was saying he was in love with me, too.

He leant forwards, his hand still on my face, and I felt my whole chest tighten. He was going to . . . His mouth touched mine and everything exploded in my head and chest and stomach and down below at the same time. He pulled away a little but was still close enough for me to feel his breath on my face. ‘Relax,’ he whispered with a gentle smile. ‘Haven’t you ever been kissed before?’

I nodded, even though I hadn’t. I didn’t want him to think I was a silly little schoolgirl.

The corners of his soft, pink mouth curled up into another gentle smile. ‘You don’t have to lie to me,’ he whispered. ‘Poppy, sweetheart, you have to be honest with me. I’d think it was sweet if you hadn’t been kissed before. It’d make this all the more special. I don’t get to have a lot of special “firsts” any more.’

I just stared at him.

He smiled some more, moved a little closer. ‘Was that your first kiss?’ he asked.

I nodded.

‘You’re my special girl,’ he said and kissed me again. This time for a little bit longer. I didn’t know how to do this – I’d seen it on TV but it was different in real life. It wasn’t as easy as they made it look; how was I meant to breathe? Where was I meant to put my hands? How would I know if I was doing it right?

‘Relax,’ he said, his lips resting on mine. ‘I’m not going to hurt you. Just relax, OK?’

I nodded a little.

‘Good girl,’ he said. He pushed me back on to the bed as his hand went up my top. We were in the spare room at his house where he’d taken me to show me the view over the back garden. It was where his young son slept when his ex let him come over, which wasn’t very often, he told me. It was a single bed, like the one I had at home, and there were a couple of Paul Gascoigne and Gary Lineker posters taped to the walls, and a Gary Lineker bedspread on the bed. We’d sat down to have a chat and now we were lying down, with him on top of me, his hand up my top. He started to kiss my neck, while his hand stayed under my top and over my bra, and I didn’t know what to do with my hands. Was I meant to put them on his back like on TV or behind his head? Or leave them on the bed?

‘You’re so cute,’ he said as he paused in kissing me. ‘You really don’t know what to do, do you?’ He was staring down at me, looking at me as though I was incredibly important.

I shook my head, a little panicked that my inexperience would put him off.

He kissed my forehead and smiled. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll take care of you. I won’t do anything you won’t like. I won’t hurt you.’

He pulled my batwing top up over my head and threw it off the bed. I was slightly scared then. No one except the girls in PE, Bella (my sister), and Mum, had seen me with only my bra on. I shrank in on myself, crossed my hands over my chest.

‘It’s OK,’ Marcus said, soothingly. ‘You don’t have to hide from me.’ He pulled my arms apart and a small smile danced on his lips as he looked down at my plain white bra. I wished suddenly that Mum had bought me something a bit nicer, more grown-up – maybe with lace. He expertly unhooked my bra and threw it off the bed, then his hands moved over the mounds of my chest as his eyes took them in as well.

Then his hands went to the top of my leggings and he tugged them down over my hips. As his small smile became a wide grin, I groaned inside. My knickers had the day of the week written on the front. Worse than that, it was Tuesday and I was wearing Friday’s white knickers with red writing.

‘You could not get any cuter,’ he said before pulling off my leggings and knickers together.

My stomach lurched with fear and uncertainty. I’d only just had my first ever kiss. Two kisses and now we were naked. Except I was naked, Marcus wasn’t. I was bare and exposed, he wasn’t. He sat back on his heels on the end of the bed and stared at my body, his eyes running over every curve and line and roll of puppy fat.