The Ice Cream Girls (30 page)

‘One more for luck.’

‘That’s it, ladies, thank you. Now we can all relax and enjoy our little beach adventure. I bring you to the best places, don’t I?’

‘Yes,’ I said brightly, at the same time as she did.

We both knew it was easier, simpler,
better
to just play along.

‘I don’t know why you make me do these things, Serena,’
he
said. ‘You shouldn’t have worn her dress. And you shouldn’t have got ice cream on it.’ His footsteps came closer to me. ‘We had such a nice day, why did you have to ruin it? Why?’

I watched his bare feet, standing in front of me, as if they were waiting for me to say something.

‘You won’t do it again, will you?’

‘No,’
I managed to whisper, as pain jack-knifed through me. My lip was split, my jaw ached, my throat hurt, my chest burned, my stomach was a caved-in mass of bruises. The smallest movement would light up another part of my body in pain like a Christmas tree.
No, I won’t do that again.

‘Good girl, I knew you’d learn,’ he said. He finally bent down and picked me up, causing more pain, more agony to ricochet around my nerve-endings. ‘Come on, let me help you up, here.’

My body was too bruised, too heavy from what he had done for me to move unaided so I could not resist as he dumped me on the bed.

‘It’s over with now, baby, OK? Let’s make up.’

‘No,’
I whispered again. I did not want to make up, I did not want him anywhere near me.

‘We can still salvage the day, can’t we?’ he said. ‘We can still fix this.’

I moved my head to shake it and a migraine of stars and bright lights popped behind my eyes.
‘No.’

He was lifting my dress, pushing it up around my waist. ‘You can make it up to me,’ he said.

‘No.’
I shook my head again, setting off the migraine but I did not care, I wanted to stop this. My limbs felt like lead, I could not move them to stop it, I had to tell him ‘no’ with my voice, with my headshake.

‘You can show me how much you love me.’

He was tugging off my bikini bottoms, pulling them down over my legs.

‘Stop saying no, you owe it to me, Serena.’

He was unbuttoning his shirt, unzipping his trousers.

He was looming over me, watching my split lower lip make the same movements over and over as I said the word over and over:
‘No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No.’

‘You owe me,’ he said through the twist of the smile that had taken over his face. ‘You owe me this.’

He was pushing himself inside me.

‘No,’
I continued to whisper.
‘No.’

‘Please stop crying, baby, we’re only making up.’

I wonder if they would still have called me The Ice Cream Girl if they knew the real story, if they knew that because of that day I could never bring myself to eat ice cream again.

poppy

Sometimes I forget who I am.
What
I am. What I am meant to be doing.

It’s been five days since I watched Serena. Since I went to see what she was up to. I didn’t realise that until this morning, when I was trying to put together an outfit for my ‘New York’ lunch date. I really am crazy in love, I think.

Alain and I sit side by side in the booth of an American-style diner in Brighton, on the red seats, the Formica table in front of us, our table’s jukebox playing a medley of fifties hits.

This is our second date to New York and I’m so glad we’ve decided to come back. This place does the best burgers: all thick and juicy and oozing with grease. The cheese is slabbed on top, the salad is fresh and the pickles have the perfect sharpness. And the French fries –
divine
.

I love this. I love sitting around, talking to someone, having him talk to me as if I’m an equal, replying without vetting every word I utter in case I make a mistake. Being able to relax with someone is another luxury for my list.

I must write to Tina and tell her. Tell her that in the outside world you don’t have to be so cautious, you don’t have to be wary of people who want to be your friend. You can let someone in, even if you have just met – because if you do, if you let that person in, you can open yourself up to a whole new, wonderful world. You can become like me. On the edge of love.

Yes, I am falling in love with him. And that does not scare me as much any more, because he has a good heart, a good soul, he is a man I can trust.

Maybe I won’t write that to Tina. If I were still inside and she wrote that to me, I’d probably have done something hideous to myself.

Surreptitiously, I kick off my sandal and caress Alain’s ankle with my toe, gently teasing him.

He swallows the mouthful he is chewing and raises his napkin to his mouth, wipes his lips, while he stares ahead at the opposite side of the booth. His eyes are slightly hooded and his gaze is slightly unfocused. Swallowing hard again, he reaches under the silver-edged Formica table and runs his hand up and down my denim-covered thigh. He turns towards me, his eyes even drowsier with desire as he unbuttons two of the middle buttons on my denim skirt and slips his hand inside the material. He uses two fingers to trace a path from my inner knee to the top of my inner thigh, and I have to stifle a loud gasp as a bolt of desire jolts me. That is what I imagine what being struck by lightning would feel like, how it would feel to plug yourself into an electrical socket and flip the switch. I only felt something like that
once
before. It was
only
like that once with Marcus. I can’t believe that this is what other women feel all the time and I experienced it after the very first time Marcus kissed me.

Alain leans in and kisses me, his tongue pushing urgently into my mouth while his free hand snakes around the back of my head and his fingers entangle themselves in my hair.

‘Let’s go,’ he says breathlessly as he pulls away a fraction, his hand on my thigh increasing in pressure. ‘Let’s go now before I change my mind and decide we still need to wait.’

He pays for a taxi to take us back to my parents’ house from Brighton, and we kiss the whole way back. I was embarrassed at first because I was so used to doing that sort of thing in private, was rarely allowed to even acknowledge Marcus in public let alone anything else, that I wasn’t comfortable simply kissing in front of the taxi driver, let alone what Alain was trying to do.

‘He’s seen a lot worse,’ Alain whispered as he gently nibbled my earlobe, devoured my neck. ‘Ain’t ya, mate?’ he called to the taxi driver. ‘You’ve seen a lot worse.’

‘Just keep your clothes on,’ the taxi driver replied, unbothered. If he didn’t mind . . . when Alain kissed me, I kissed him back and by the time we fall in through my parents’ front door we are ready to start ripping clothing to get to each other.

We stumble up the stairs, still pawing at each other, tugging at clothing but hampered by buttons and zips and sleeves.

‘Do you have a rubber Johnny?’ I ask as we fall on to my narrow bed. He climbs on top and sits astride me, and I start on his jeans’ buttons.

‘A rub—? Oh, you mean a condom. Yeah.’ He climbs off again and grabs his jacket, which is on the floor by the door. He picks it up and pulls out his black leather wallet, then pulls out the rubb— the condom. I sit up on my knees and, with him watching, I peel my white top over my head, then let it drop to the floor of my bedroom.

Rather than drive him wild with desire, as I thought it would given that we were practically doing it the whole way home, it seems to stop him, scare him, and he drops his wallet and then the condom as if they have burnt him.

‘What’s the matter?’ I ask him. Instinctively, I cross my arms across my top half, hiding my white lacy bra, protecting my heart. He cannot change his mind now – we’re both ready.

He reaches up and anxiously rubs his hands over his mouth. ‘Performance anxiety,’ he says. ‘So much pressure.’ He blows out a couple of times, like a weightlifter about to lift the big one. ‘Pressure.’ He is uncurling and curling his fingers into his hands. ‘Real pressure.’

‘You really know how to make a girl feel wanted,’ I say, holding my arms closer around me.

‘It’s not you,’ he reassures. ‘It’s just this is the first time you’ve . . . in twenty years. Twenty years. It’s like taking your virginity. I’ve never done that. And I don’t want to do it wrong.’

‘Shouldn’t
I
be worried about that?’ I ask.

‘Oh, Poppy. Poppy, Poppy, Poppy,’ he says, again rubbing his mouth. In the language of the body, something I did quite a lot of reading on, this behaviour suggests someone is lying to you. They are trying to rub away the stain of their lie with that action.
Is Alain lying to me? Is he really feeling performance anxiety or has he just changed his mind?

‘I’ll be right back,’ he says then leaves the room, almost at a run. I hear the bathroom door shut and lock behind him. My parents are in London visiting my siblings again. We have the house to ourselves, and I hadn’t actually been expecting this to happen. When I started to play footsie with him, I thought it’d be something nice and gentle to do on our New York date. I didn’t expect it to so overwhelmingly turn him on, and I didn’t expect taking my top off to so completely turn him off.

I pull back the covers and climb into bed. That’s probably the best thing to do. If he does come back and has changed his mind, at least I’ll be covered up; if he comes back hoping to pick up where we left off, I’ll be part-way there and won’t have to do the thing that so clearly put him off.

Time moves on and on, and nearly ten minutes pass before he returns to my bedroom. He shuts the door behind him, then leans heavily on it, his tall, wiry body like a book that has fallen against a bookend.

Something more than performance anxiety is wrong.

‘I think you should put your top back on,’ he says in a serious tone. ‘I need to tell you something.’

‘And I need to be dressed to hear it?’ I ask.

He nods, and I watch the guilt creep like climbing ivy across his face. ‘That would be for the best.’

poppy

‘I’ve got something to tell you,’ he says.

The dread starts to roll over me in waves, the knowledge that whatever he says will alter my life for ever. That scares me. I do not want to have this love destroyed. It has kept me going these past few weeks, I do not want to lose it.

‘What, you’re married?’ I say, trying to sound flip, trying to disguise that my heart is already crumbling. There’s a moment in any relationship when you know that it is over. For the most part you can ignore it and carry on but, in this instance, that is not going to happen. I know it. I know it like I know how to breathe. It’s simply a case of finding out why it’s over.

He does not laugh, and he does not flinch.

‘You’re married,’ I state. Serious this time.

‘No,’ he replies, still frowning, still serious. ‘No. I was, a long time ago. I got divorced five years ago. We got married and divorced quite young, it’s not a new story. Not that interesting, either. But that’s not what I’ve got to tell you.’

‘Is it important?’ I ask, trying to save this, save us.

‘Yes.’

‘Are you sure? Because we all think things are important and ninety-nine per cent of the time they’re not. We could go our whole lives without knowing whatever it is. And I am not that curious.’

Alain is not playing, he is not interested in saving our relationship, he is hell-bent on destroying it. He continues to speak: ‘We didn’t meet by accident,’ he says. ‘It wasn’t Fate that brought us together.’

A cement truck dumps its load on my chest, crushing my lungs. ‘What are you saying?’ I manage through short bursts of breathing.

‘I’m a journalist,’ Alain says.

‘What? What are you talking about? You’re not a lecturer?’

‘No. Well, yes, but no.’

What is going on? What is he saying? ‘Is it yes or no? Are you a lecturer?’

‘I lecture – well, I used to – in basic journalism at a night school. My main job, my real job, is writing. Investigating. Being a journalist.’

I bite on my lower lip, knowing that there is more to this. He has more to confess, more to unburden from his soul. ‘What are you telling me?’

‘Like I said before, us meeting was not Fate. I engineered those encounters to meet you.’

‘Why?’ I know the answer. It’s pretty obvious, but I need to hear it to believe it.

‘I wanted to meet you because I wanted to write a story on you. On The Ice Cream Girls and what really happened. I wanted to get close to you to find out the truth.’

‘No, no, no . . .’ I say, standing up and holding my head. ‘No, no, no. . .’

‘I’m not going to write the story any more,’ he says above my moans. ‘I can’t. I didn’t expect to fall for you. I didn’t even mean to be anything more than a friend. But how could I not fall for you? You’re nothing like the girl in picture and the girl in the stories. You’re . . .’

‘No!’ I say to him. ‘You don’t get to explain this away. Just stop talking, OK? Stop.’

He does as he’s told and stands still and silent against my door. I pace the room, my hand pressed over my mouth, my eyes wide.

‘Is that why you didn’t want to go further? In the sack, I mean? Is that why you kept stopping? Because none of it was real?’

‘It was real. It was very real. Which is why I’m not going to do the story.’

‘Just answer the question.’