The Villa (4 page)

‘So … Where else d’you go?’ she asked. Even though he was a lost cause.

‘Parties, I guess,’ he said. ‘Last week I broke up with my girlfriend. My mate Harley threw a rave to celebrate.’

‘Pardon me?’ Surely she was hearing things?
Girlfriend
…? Ginny gripped on to the arms of her chair.

He repeated what he’d said.

‘Cool.’ Inside, Ginny was squealing. He’d had a girlfriend. He – at least for the moment – wasn’t gay. Unless he was in denial? This was amazing news. She couldn’t wait to tell Becca. ‘High five,’ she muttered.

‘Sorry?’ He was absorbed in the bit next to her right ear. She hoped she didn’t have any visible ear wax.

‘Nothing.’ She tried not to stare at him, but when you were having your hair cut you had to look at something, and there wasn’t a lot of choice. Mirror. Hair products. Her own face. Ben. No contest. ‘Sorry about your girlfriend,’ she added.

‘I’m not.’ He grinned at her.

Ginny pulled in her stomach. The Ball was still lurking. But at least she was thin. And according to her mother, she had inherited Nonna’s ‘black Sicilian eyes’. Which had to be sexy, didn’t it? People were always telling her she should be a model and they were probably right. She should leave college (though Mum would kill her) move to London and sign up with some agency. How hard could it be?

But she wouldn’t. Ginny tried to swallow and felt the usual lump in her throat. She wouldn’t do it, cos she couldn’t do that sort of thing, she just couldn’t. And she’d have to go to uni, because, well … they all expected her to.

Snip, chip … Snip, chip … Ben was appraising her in the mirror. Ginny felt hot. What was wrong with her? She couldn’t even talk to him now that he wasn’t gay. His fingers were brushing against her neck and goosebumps were travelling the full length of her body. Which was, anyone would have to admit, a long way. So was she hot or cold, or what? Jumping jackals – it must be what.

What was it like, she wondered for the zillionth time. What was it like to do it? To really do it with a boy? Most of her friends had got to at least second or third base; Becca all the way. But then – as Mum had pointed out – Becca was a bit
upfront
. Ginny didn’t really want to imagine Becca … But there again, sometimes when you looked at her you couldn’t help but imagine, which was probably what her mother meant. Becca wasn’t thin, but on the plus side she had what Ginny wanted more than almost anything, more even than Ben’s hands on her neck (though not more than the Ball to disappear). Boobs.

Ginny had a private theory that third base was more intimate than fourth, but she didn’t want to voice this in case there was something else she didn’t know about. After all, until you’d done both … Was she the only girl of her age in Pridehaven who hadn’t done it? Sometimes she reckoned this was very possible. And it was her own fault. It was just that all the boys … Well, she didn’t fancy any of them. But she did want to be over this. She wanted, she supposed, to know it all.

‘Maybe,’ Ben said, as if he could read her mind, ‘you and I should go out for drinks sometime.’

Was he asking her out on a date? This gorgeous boy with hot lips who could make shimmering turquoise eyeliner look macho? Ginny tried to stay calm. But suddenly it felt like all the best things in the world – those jeans in Topshop that she couldn’t afford, chocolate biscuits from M&S, Kentucky Fried Chicken in a bun and cookie-dough ice cream (OK, mostly items of food, she realised that, but hey, that was her problem and she’d deal with it) had all happened in one fabulous wave at Hide Beach in full sunshine when she had no spots on her face, was wearing her zebra-print bikini and the Ball had disappeared behind a far-off goal line …

‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘Maybe we should.’

He finished the jagged bit of her fringe. ‘Cool. Let’s exchange numbers.’

‘OK.’ Ginny watched as he fluffed it out with his fingers. ‘I’m having a party soon,’ she added. Her mother had only told her last night that she was going away. But how long did it take to plan a party? In this case about twenty seconds.

‘Will you be OK, Ginny?’ her mother had asked. ‘It’s only for a week. You’ll have Nonna and Pops down the road. And Lisa next door. You could stay at Nonna’s if you don’t want to be on your own.’

Hovering unicorns. How old did she think Ginny was? Ten? She loved having the house to herself, though it didn’t happen often. Her problem would be that Nonna and Pops
were
down the road (although they were lovely
and Nonna was a great cook) and that Lisa
was
next door.

‘Who’re you going on holiday with?’ she asked her mother innocently.

As intended, this brought on the guilt. ‘Oh, Ginny, I’d love to take you with me. Only you’re in the middle of revising for your exams and … ’

‘It’s OK.’ Ginny shrugged. ‘But I might have a few of the girls round one night. That’s all right, isn’t it? We’ll probably have pizza and watch a movie.’ If her mother knew she was having a gathering, then if it got out of hand, or
when
it got out of hand, or
if/when
any of her minders noticed that it had got out of hand, then everything would be far easier to explain. She firmly subdued the twinge of remorse that popped up whenever she deceived her mother. Ginny loved her, of course she did. And she knew how much her mother had done for her, what she had sacrificed, all that stuff. But she also wanted to punish her sometimes. Just for … Well, for nothing really. That was just the way things were.

‘Of course it is.’ Her mother looked vague. ‘Who …? ’

‘And who did you say you’re going with?’ Ginny cut in.

‘Oh, I’m not sure.’ Her mother looked evasive, which meant she was planning to go with Robin. ‘Maybe on my own.’ Which also meant she was planning to go with Robin. What a loser.

For some reason which Ginny couldn’t quite fathom, her mother didn’t realise that Ginny knew about Robin. She’d been introduced to him, yes, when Lisa and her husband
Mitch were also round, in that careful way her mother had, as if Ginny might say,
Who the fuck are you?
instead of,
Hello
, thus ruining her mother’s credibility for ever. Tempting though it was, Ginny had been polite and answered all his predictable questions about college and going to uni without so much as a
Jesus Christ
. She could almost hear her mother’s relief at his ‘What a sweet girl.’ Wanker.

What her mother wasn’t aware of was that Ginny knew when Robin had been round in the afternoon. She knew when they’d gone to bed (Mum’s bedroom curtains drawn, two wine glasses in the room), and when they’d done it on the sofa (cushions plumped, coffee table at a different angle), though Ginny didn’t dwell on that one.

She’d also worked out that he was married, since they didn’t hang out together at normal times and since her mother mostly looked unhappy or had pink spots on her cheeks, which meant she was about to meet him or had just received an illicit phone call. Ginny didn’t like Robin, who was too smooth, too conventional and too married, and she didn’t like what he was doing to her mum. But she figured that when her mother wanted her advice, she’d ask for it.

‘A party? Cool.’ Ben twirled the scissors. ‘I trust you’ll be inviting your favourite stylist?’

‘Consider it done,’ said Ginny. Bring it on. She could hardly wait. This could, she realised, be IT. Banish the Ball. Her First Sexual Experience. Way to Go …

Ben turned on the hairdryer and began to blow dry.
‘Hot enough for you?’ He raised one perfectly plucked eyebrow.

He wasn’t joking. ‘Abso-bloody-lutely,’ said Ginny.

Tess knocked briefly and went straight into Lisa’s kitchen.

‘Come round for coffee,’ Lisa had suggested to her on the phone ten minutes ago when Tess started on her news. ‘It’ll be easier to talk. And I’m cooking supper.’

Lisa, queen of multi-tasking, was wearing a green wrap-around pinny decorated with red elephants, over black jeans and a T-shirt. She was dark, petite and apparently unflappable. Tonight, she was stirring the contents of a massive tureen of chilli with one hand, directing the proceedings of various children – aged between seven and eleven – with the other. Tess watched and remembered her own experience with Ginny. No husband; an only child. Very different in so many ways.

‘Tess.’ Lisa offered a cheek for a kiss. ‘Come and sit down.’

Lisa’s kitchen, with its spicy fragrance of chilli, its reassuring lived-in-ness and the warm glow from its ochre-painted walls, was a haven. When they had moved in next door to Tess’s own slightly run down, end of terrace Victorian townhouse and she’d first been drawn into Lisa and Mitch’s welcoming circle, Tess had hoped she could absorb and emulate this atmosphere that Lisa seemed to conjure up so effortlessly. An atmosphere of togetherness with Mitch
and their children, of family and of home. She couldn’t, of course. How could she when she didn’t have a Mitch? Should she feel guilty about it? That she could give her daughter only so much; that she couldn’t provide a father? But maybe what she had with Ginny – that special one-to-one relationship – was only possible because it was just the two of them against the world.

‘I’ll be with you in a tick,’ Lisa told her. ‘Just got to—’ She addressed her offspring. ‘Get your books off the table now, you lot, if you want supper tonight.’

Tess moved aside as three pairs of hands grabbed exercise books, pencil cases and what have you, chattering all the while.
Have you got my black felt-tip pen? Where’s my ruler? That’s my rubber, Android. Don’t call him Android
(that was Lisa). She shot Tess an apologetic smile. They were like a volcano in full flow.
Volcano
… Tess leant back in her chair. She and Robin could visit Etna. And Palermo. Old temples, cathedrals, deserted sandy bays … She felt a brief lurch of self-reproach. Could she just swan off for a week and leave her daughter here alone? Should she …?

Ginny’s father – a free-thinking, guitar-strumming, surfer dude with long limbs and eyes as blue as the swimming pool where he worked as a lifeguard, had stuck around for the first six months of Tess’s pregnancy, before departing to Australia. He had asked Tess to go with him – he couldn’t stand another English winter, he said. But for Tess, the timing was crucial. She was only twelve weeks away from bringing a child into the world. Given the choice of
deserting his lover or facing that English winter, David had chosen desertion. It hadn’t boded well for the future.

And now her daughter was growing up rather quickly and rather scarily. Because there were, weren’t there, so many difficult decisions ahead, so many ways to go wrong. And Ginny was also growing, she supposed, away from her. She watched Lisa’s children as they clustered around their mother.
Don’t grow too far
…

‘I’m busy, Freddie,’ Lisa was saying to her oldest. ‘Go and do your homework in the other room or watch a DVD before dinner and we’ll do it later.’

‘You always say that,’ Freddie grumbled, but he grinned at Tess, claimed an orange from the fruit bowl on the table and departed cheerfully enough.

‘And make sure it’s something suitable for the others,’ Lisa added, shooing her two girls away with him. ‘I want to talk to Tess.’

Tess grinned. She was so hyped up she could burst. She was a woman of property. In Sicily. And she was going there – with Robin.

Lisa put a glass down in front of her.

‘Thanks.’ Coffee had metamorphosed into red wine, but Tess wasn’t complaining.

‘I’ve moved on.’ Lisa topped up her own glass and chucked another generous measure into the pot of chilli. ‘Cheers.’ She lifted the bottle. ‘And congratulations.’

‘Thanks.’ Though what had she done? Just belonged to the right family, she supposed.

‘Tell me everything,’ Lisa commanded.

So she did. She had Googled the area of Cetaria and discovered that it was perfect for diving. It was close to a national park now designated a conservation area and blessed with beaches of rock, white sand and clear, aquamarine water. Volcanic eruption and earthquakes over the years had produced caves with stalactites and freshwater springs, and the marine life was apparently spectacular. Tess couldn’t believe her luck. She had always loved the sea. Her parents had bought her first pair of goggles when she was only seven years old. She’d spend hours dipping her head under the waves squinting to make out the contours of the seabed. Underwater, all colours seemed more vivid, more real; fronds of plants and weed danced to the tune of the current; tiny fish slivered across her vision like streaks of oil. Tess was mesmerised by this Other World. Light, fluid and mysterious.

As she grew up, she’d gone snorkelling on holidays abroad, wanting to go deeper, to see more. Then last year she’d spotted a PADI open-water course advertised in the surf shop in Pridehaven. It had been a year to the day since she’d started seeing Robin. To celebrate, they’d planned a romantic dinner at a restaurant a safe fifteen miles out of town. (
‘I know it’s hard, sweetie, but do we really want to cause Helen unnecessary pain?’
) And he had let her down – cancelled, with only an hour’s notice. It hadn’t been the first time and it wouldn’t be the last. ‘I’ll make it up to you, Tess,’ he’d said. But she had thought then.
I have to do something for me
.

She’d scribbled down the number of the diving course.
You never know
…

The PADI course turned out to be just what she needed. It began by making them familiar with the equipment – the wetsuit, mask, tank and weight belt – then taught the safety procedures: how to surface, how to use sign language underwater and eventually how to transfer these skills to the real-life environment of the sea. Tess was hooked. She had taken more courses, eventually qualifying as an advanced diver.

‘What will you do with it, though, sweetie?’ Robin had asked her, as if everything in life had to have a practical purpose.

‘Enjoy it,’ she said. ‘Go on diving holidays alone. Live my life.’

He’d shut up then – well, what could he say? He wasn’t offering her everything she needed. She had to look elsewhere, and why not? Why should you be dependent on one man for your happiness, your
raison d’être
? She’d learned that lesson when David left for Australia. No one would do that to her again.