The Kiss (19 page)

‘Y
ou will come,’ Fatima insists.

‘Tabby will understand,’ I say stubbornly.

Fatima glares through fantastic Hallowe’en eyes, spider-web falsies shimmering on her eyelids. ‘
Lâche
.’

‘So I’m a coward,’ I say, lifting my chin. ‘I’ll apply for membership to the Coward Society, get a little yellowbelly badge, bury my head in sand, whatever. I’m not coming. You go. Val’ll want you there as early as possible tonight.’

Fatima doesn’t move.

‘Just go, will you?’ I say weakly.

My phone rings. Tab. I don’t answer, hating myself for it.

‘If you don’t come,’ Fatima declares, ‘I will tell to Jem that you love him and so you don’t come because of this.’

I gape in horror. ‘You wouldn’t.’

She jabs at me with a fearsome blood-red fingernail. ‘I will tell to him everything. The show. The so-sad tears.’

‘Fatima, you—’

‘You
English
,’ she says impatiently. ‘Why must I explain everything? How glad I am that I am French. You must put on your nice clothes and your pretty eyes and you must show him you are not scared. Love is the war. If you don’t fight, you will lose.’

She is getting dangerously loud. Dad will start taking an interest in a minute.

‘I’ve lost already,’ I whisper. ‘I—’

‘I will put on
Facebook
,’ Fatima threatens. ‘Then everyone will know. The tall girlfriend will know.’

She whips out her phone and starts typing. I fly across the room at her, knocking the phone from her hand.

‘You win, you total cow! I’ll come for the show. But that is IT. I am leaving before the party. Is that clear?’

‘
Bon
. Now dress.’

She goes through my wardrobe like a whirlwind. Dresses discarded, shoes ignored, scarves thrown across the bed.

‘That?’ I say, cautiously looking at the black lace thing she is thrusting at me. ‘It’s a vest.’

‘It is super-sexy minidress.’

‘I’ll freeze my butt off!’

She shakes it at me, firmly. I put on the vest, adjusting it around an old black bra she located at the back of my sock drawer. I am relieved when she hands me black leggings next. For a nasty moment I thought she was going to send me to my doom half-naked.

‘Hair.’

‘Straight?’ I say hopefully.

‘Boring as a boring English person. Curls,
chérie
. They are your most sexy thing.’

She tugs my hair out of its scrunchy, making me yelp.

‘So pretty,’ she says with satisfaction as it cascades around my face. ‘Big earrings, red lipstick,
boum
. You are a little goddess.’

A goddess is the last thing I want to be. Fatima opens her make-up bag and shoves me into the bathroom.

Fifteen minutes later and more frightened than ever, I insist on putting my trusty parka over the top of the strange, lace-clad, sooty-eyed, red-lipped creation that is post-makeover me. Fatima is appalled.

‘It’s
November
tomorrow,’ I hiss as she tries to pull the parka from my shoulders for the third time in as many minutes. ‘And I’m
not
wearing heels.’

I am close to running back to my room and locking the door behind me. Wisely, Fatima allows my Vans and parka to stand.

We walk, at my insistence. Fatima tries to urge me forward at more than a snail’s pace. ‘You think he will not be there if we are late?’ she goads. ‘He will be there. The person that you don’t want to be there will be there, with this tall girl. They will be kissing. Picture this worst thing and prepare for the war.’

I picture the tall girlfriend dead. It’s bad of me, but I do. It’s surprisingly easy. My emotions feel like a ticking bomb, packed with venom for a girl I’ve never even met. The anger and upset I felt over Dave are nothing compared to this.

As if I have conjured him through the sheer power of thought, Dave walks around the corner, holding hands with a sulky-looking Louise. He leers excitedly at Fatima, then realizes she’s with me. Guilt and caution are suddenly all over his face.

I am in no mood for small talk. ‘I hardly recognize you on foot, Dave.’

‘Where have you been, Dee?’ he says, recovering. ‘I’ve been calling you for
days
.’

Louise is holding tightly on to his fingers, preventing him from slipping his moorings. The news that he’s been calling me isn’t going down well.

‘I got rid of my phone,’ I say. ‘Thought I’d got rid of you too.’

The urgent eyebrows Dave aims at me give him the look of a startled stoat. ‘What happened to . . .’

‘It got broken,’ I say.

He deflates before my eyes, a sad individual in a naff leather coat.

Louise fixes Dave with a basilisk stare. ‘What’s she talking about? Why were you calling her?’

Propelled by the strange surge of empowerment Fatima has triggered, I address Louise. ‘Does Dave still have his testicles?’

Looking surprised, Louise nods.

‘Why do you still have your testicles, Dave?’ I ask.

‘I sold my car,’ he mumbles.

‘You sold your car,’ I repeat.

‘I sold my car.’

‘
You sold your car?
’

Louise interrupts irritably. ‘He sold his car, OK? God knows why I agreed to go out with him again.’ She bends down and rubs at the back of her shoe. She is wearing extremely high heels.

Fatima says something long and venomous-sounding in French.

‘What?’ says Dave.

‘Trust me,’ I say, struggling to contain the volcano.
You ruined everything for me when you could have just sold your car.
‘You don’t want to know.’

I leave him with Louise moaning on the pavement about her shoes. I’m so furious, I can feel myself turning green and expanding with every step I take.

‘Dave
le bâtard
,’ Fatima states, keeping pace with me. ‘Yes?’

I tell Fatima everything in a tumble of fury. The ATM robberies, my lost money, my found money. Dave and the swipe machine. Dave and his flaming car. I don’t know how much she follows. When I’m angry, I talk even faster than I walk.

‘His contacts are probably the same guys who ripped off the ATMs. Who else would he get a fake swipe machine from? Jem goes ape at
me
while Dave simply sells his car, pays what he owes and gets his girlfriend back!’

Judging from Louise’s face tonight, Dave won’t last long without his car. The thought gives me a degree of savage satisfaction.

‘How do you get your money back?’ Fatima asks, doing her best to keep up.

‘The bank refunded me. I think Jem knew about the scam somehow, he kept telling me to talk to the bank. He’s got dodgy friends, he must’ve asked arou—’

Click, whirr. A sudden bright ray of understanding.

Fatima clicks her fingers under my nose. ‘’Allo? You nearly walk into the lamp post.’

I am like Buddha but skinnier with more hair, and infinitely more stupid.
I know it all
.

‘Studs was part of the fraud,’ I say in wonder. ‘The skinny weasel I nearly bumped into at Ella’s flat. You must have seen him. Diamonds in his nose.
Studs!
’ My brain is at fever pitch. ‘Jem would never give Studs up to the police because they are friends from way back. But Jem guessed Studs was involved when I mentioned my bank problem . . . He went to find him – talk to him – fight – black eye . . .’

I got this for you.

I clutch my head. Comprehension hurts when it comes at you as fast as this. ‘Jem’s the one that gave Studs the split lip,’ I whisper.

‘He must love you very much to do this,’ says Fatima.

The strength of my shame, my longing and my total idiocy nearly knock me off my feet. ‘I guess he did, once,’
I whisper. ‘But now he’s got a better deal with Miss Burj Khalifa.’

Half a moon peeps out from behind a frost-edged cloud overhead. Aphrodite, listening in.

‘This is all a very big mess,’ Fatima says after a long silence. ‘But you must still fight,
chérie
. If he love you once, he can maybe love you again.’

I shake my head. All the fight has gone out of me. I am a sad, punctured balloon flapping in the wind. There is no way back. ‘What did you say to Dave back there, by the way?’ I ask, rubbing my nose and blinking back the tears that are about to turn my mascara into several shades of hell.

‘I say he is like the corpse of a dog in my mouth with the maggots inside.’

‘Story of my life,’ I mutter.

I
t is nearly six o’clock as we force our way up the crowded steps, through the double doors and into the throbbing pumpkin-decorated lobby. For an instant, half an instant even, I think I see Studs slipping through the depths like a piranha. This many punters in one place spells showtime in more ways than one.

‘Fatima!’ Val roars over the mass of heads already crowding the bar. ‘You’re LATE!’

‘You will be OK?’ Fatima asks me. She looks genuinely worried.

I know without checking in a mirror that I look more undead than all the zombies, ghosts, vampires and slasher-murderers pushing and shoving around me put together. But then she is swept into the crowd and is gone.

I fight my way through to the auditorium doors. Kev looks spectacular, a great gaunt skeleton in a headset. ‘Looking hot tonight, Delilah the vixen,’ he grins and lets me through.

The velvet thump of the doors behind me cuts off the chaos. Members of the theatre’s lighting crew are scaling the rigs at the back of the stage, adjusting spotlights and attaching filters. Someone has their head inside the piano, filling the air with the monotonous
bom-bom-bom
of strings being hit and tightened and hit again, while a broken piece of scenery is nailed together and cables firmly gaffer-taped to the floor. The air is thick with expectancy. You can almost open your mouth and take a bite.

Beep.

PLZ PLZ CALL I NEED YOU

xxxx

‘Delilah!’ Appearing at the stage door, Rich looks anxious and dishevelled. ‘Thank God. Tabitha’s going nuts trying to reach you. Apparently you haven’t been answering your phone. Can you go and see her, talk to her?’

On top of the emotional exhaustion, I suddenly feel scared. ‘What’s happened?’

Backstage, Mr Metal is staring at his empty make-up chair, mindlessly twirling the metal in his nose. Somewhere in the background, in the toilets maybe, someone is screaming with fury. Despite the apparent focus, the swish of brushes from the make-up team, it is clear that the whole room is trying to hear what’s going on.

A half-painted Tab almost knocks me down, ignoring the multi-coloured swearing from Ella with her brush held in mid-air.

‘You came,’ she sobs. ‘I thought you weren’t going to come, I’ve been messaging you and calling you—’

‘I wouldn’t miss your big night, would I?’ I lie, feeling bewildered by the drama that has descended from nowhere. I have almost forgotten what it feels like to have Tab needing me like this. ‘Of course I came. What’s up?’

She shoves her phone at me with trembling fingers.

Leave my boyfriend alone bitch

‘Charming,’ I say, extremely relieved that it isn’t anything more serious than a fresh Sam situation. ‘Maria?’

‘I didn’t
do
anything,’ Tab wails. ‘
He
sent the text to
me
.’

‘If you don’t sit down, I am going to redefine ape.’ Ella looks mad-eyed with nerves. ‘I’ll walk out of that door and you will get on that stage looking like a camel’s rectum.’

I steer Tab back into Ella’s make-up chair and pat Ella on the arm.

‘And I will
bite
the next person who tries to calm me down,’ Ella snarls, fixing my patting hand with the stony glare of Medusa. Her pupils are like pinheads.

‘I got a text,’ Tabby sniffs. ‘From Sam. He wants me back.’

It is remarkable to discover that I can feel like death yet also winded with delight
at the same time
. ‘Wow!’ I gasp. ‘Just like that? Can I see the text?’

I’ve messed up. I love you.

Go figure.

S x

Short, sweet, despondent.
Totally
what is needed. I am seized with a passionate longing for the message to be for me, from Jem.

‘But that’s fantastic!’ I say, pressing the phone back into her hands.

Tab shakes her head. ‘Maria saw the text on his phone and went ballistic. Sam hadn’t said anything to her about breaking up. Not a word. We’re on stage in just over an hour, Lilah. About to tell a love story that, right now, isn’t going to happen.’

‘Of course it’s going to happen!’ I say, aghast. The show can’t go belly-up now. Not
now
. Not after everything I
have done.

‘Beatrice is meant to be in love with Benedick,’ Tabby wails. ‘But now all she wants to do is kill him. She’s insane with rage and refusing to get her face done and threatening not to do the show at all. This is all my fault!’

I try to keep a grip. ‘It’s all Sam’s fault, surely?’

‘Lilah, you don’t—’

‘STOP TALKING,’ Ella howls.

‘Everyone needs to calm down,’ says Patricia. Beneath her demonic make-up, she is grey with anxiety. ‘Maria wouldn’t be so unprofessional as to let us down now. There will be agents out there, and press, and—’

Maria’s shrieking pierces the toilet walls. ‘YOU SPINELESS SKUNK! YOU FAT COKE-DRINKING FLATFISH!’

‘She’s a charmer, that Maria, isn’t she?’ says Jem.

I have been so absorbed in Tabby’s drama that I have totally failed to clock Jem making up Dorcas two chairs further down the room. It is a miracle that I don’t wet myself then and there. He is looking right at me.

Sam crashes out of the toilets, breathing hard. A bog roll comes flying out and clonks him in the back of the head.

‘BASTARD!’ Maria screeches from the toilets.

‘I can’t do this,’ Sam says. ‘Sorry, Patricia. Sorry everyone.’ The look he gives Tabby is one of hopeless longing. ‘Sorry Tab.’

He hurries out of the fire escape at the back of the room. Ella leans her hand hard on Tabitha’s shoulder to stop her leaping out of her chair and running after him, muttering warnings of death by hideous means.

‘Oh dear,’ says Eunice helplessly. ‘No leading man now either.’

‘Come on,’ Jem says to me as a shrill, desperate chatter breaks out.

‘Where are we going?’ I say in surprise.

‘I’ve finished Dorcas. I don’t have anything to do. You don’t have anything to do. Everyone else is busy, terrified or both. We have about an hour until curtain-up. We’re going to talk to Sam.’

He holds out his hand to me. I stare at it in disbelief.

‘You will bring him back, won’t you?’ Tab implores.

‘Do our best,’ I mumble, sliding my hand into Jem’s. My whole body is boiling hot from the pressure of his fingers. ‘Can’t promise anything. Someone else will have to get Maria to put her toys back in the pram.’

Jem threads me through the room and out of the same fire escape Sam has just used. A relieved wave of applause follows us out, cut off abruptly by the slamming of the fire door. The cold air wallops into me.

‘Should have grabbed my jacket,’ Jem says, shivering. ‘Can’t really go back in now, can I? Not cool.’

‘Like leaving a party,’ I blurt, for want of anything better to say. ‘When you say goodbye to everyone really loudly and shut the front door and then realize your phone is upstairs.’

‘In the bog,’ Jem says.

‘In the bog,’ I agree. His tall girlfriend wouldn’t approve of this hand-holding, I think.

Sam is standing by the rushing river, his big back in silhouette under the dirty brown lights. He turns slightly as we approach.

‘You probably think I’m the biggest idiot in town,’ he says.

‘I can think of a bigger one,’ I say, with complete honesty. ‘Your timing’s a bit off, though. Couldn’t you
have held it in until after the show?’

His eyes are pained. ‘I’ve been thinking about it for ages. Since . . . well, basically on and off since I ended it. It’s just . . . my pride took a kicking at that party. And then there was Maria. I was still holding a candle for Tab at the start of our relationship, but suddenly Maria was right under my skin.’ He looks puzzled. ‘She was incredibly sexy, somehow. Do you know what I mean?’

‘Don’t look at me,’ I say.

Jem has finally let go of my hand.

‘I was in a mess,’ Sam groans. ‘Did I like Maria, or Tab? Tab or Maria? And today I finally realized I had it all wrong. I was thinking with my—’

He stops apologetically.

‘I get the gist,’ I say.

‘Anyway,’ he goes on, ‘I started thinking with my heart and my head instead. The minute I did that, everything became clear. I had to act before I lost sight of what mattered all over again. And so . . .’

‘You sent the text to Tabby,’ I say.

‘As soon as I’d sent it, I felt like a total bastard.’ Sam looks appalled at himself. ‘I never thought I’d be the kind of guy who’d do that. And then Maria borrowed my phone without me realizing and . . . She’s right to be angry with me.’

‘You can’t let everyone down just because you feel bad,’ I object. ‘There’s a whole cast in there, dangling on a thread. Hundreds of ticket holders all looking like they’ve been through some kind of body shredder. The band, the set . . . Everything is ready to go. Are you really going to dump everyone in it?’

Sam groans again. I turn the last serious screw I have in my arsenal.

‘This is Tabby’s big night, Sam. She’s worked really hard on this. If you really love her—’

‘I do,’ Sam says.

Lucky, lucky Tab.

‘If you really love her,’ I repeat, ‘you’ll do the show. Because if you don’t, she’ll never forgive you. And then you won’t have anyone.’

I have a feeling Tab would forgive Sam most things, even this – eventually. But I say it with as much conviction as I can.

‘Maria loathes the sight of me,’ Sam says desperately. ‘How am I supposed to make her act like she loves me?’

‘She’s meant to hate you, isn’t she?’

Sam looks doubtful. ‘Yes, but she’s meant to love me too.’

I glance discreetly at my watch. Not long to curtain-up. ‘But not to begin with, right?’ I prompt.

‘True,’ he concedes.

‘Tell her something to get her on that stage. There are agents in the audience, Patricia said. Tab says she really wants an agent.’

Sam nods.

‘Tell her an agent has come specifically to see her,’ I say, struck with sudden inspiration.

‘But they haven’t,’ Sam says, startled.

‘Lie,’ I order him.

I wait for Jem to protest but he is staring at the ground. Sam squares his shoulders and goes back inside. The fire door swings gently shut behind him.

‘Well you were a fat lot of use,’ I tell Jem, a little crossly.

‘I’d only have said the wrong thing,’ he says. ‘I’ve done a lot of that lately.’

There is a long, weird moment, full of rushing river and freezing wind. He takes my hand again. His lips are so close and his eyes are so dark.

The fire escape bangs open. We leap apart.

Val is ashen. ‘There’s been an incident,’ she says. ‘An ambulance is on its way. I need your help.’

I stare at the spattering of vomit on Val’s shirt. Picture a pair of wired Medusa eyes with pupils like pinheads. I see Studs the piranha in my mind’s eye as a ghastly dread creeps through me. Has Ella done something stupid?

‘One of you, either of you, both of you, I don’t care. Oz is with her now. I can’t leave the bar for much longer. Everyone else is needed for curtain-up and
someone
has to go to hospital with her. Move, will you?’