Twelve. Vanessa Jones

their own thing.

      One of the clones beside me has had enough. He says definitively, ‘Look, she won’t age well.’

      ‘What are you on? Those cheekbones!’ I turn to look at them and hear, ‘See what I mean?’ and realise with some horror that they’re talking about me. It’s one against two in praise of my longevity. I can’t handle this now. I’m not at my best. My face feels like one of Picasso’s. I close my eyes and hope they’ll go away. They don’t. I deal with it. I congratulate myself for not freaking out. I open my eyes and Josh says, ‘You are such a wreck,’ and laughs. This is not great for a girl’s confidence. Thank god it’s getting light and we could conceivably go home. I say ‘Shall we go home?’ and astoundingly, he says ‘Yes’.

      We decide to walk for twenty minutes and then catch the first train. Our ears are ringing still with the sounds of our night – techno track on auto-reverse, early-morning birdsong mixed in with the beat. Josh looks flushed, his skin thin, I think I see his blood vessels moving behind it. But he is normal compared to the weirdos on the train. Whenever I’ve travelled at this time there have only been strangers. And I’ve never been certain if it’s me or it’s them. I keep my eyes on Josh. Safe. I hold his hand on the escalator. Behind I am faintly aware of someone running, then someone tapping me, me? then someone putting a bit of paper in my hand and catching the stairs back down. Josh and I are in shock. He says, ‘What does it say?’

      ‘“Colin” and a phone number.’ It’s not just me, is it? It is an odd thing to do.

      Josh shrugs – later – and threads my hand through his arm. Later we’ll pick through the events of the evening, later decide we’ve had a brilliant time. But sleep first. Sleep. The sun is rising. Herald of a beautiful day we’re going to miss.

      And Shirley and Oliver are just waking up.

three

      August is the room of a party an hour before dawn. What was last night sparkly and exciting has now begun to fall apart and stink a little. It’s unpleasant and you want to leave but you can’t quite. Because on the other side of it, there’s only Today.

      Is hot air thinner than cold air? And if so, what’s missing? I could find out the answers to both these questions but (it’s a freedom I take so much for granted that) I won’t bother to. I do imagine though, living before anyone knew and no one could tell. The air is very thin this August and it’s confusing me. It’s as if the last few months of evaporating bodies, steaming dogshits, hot-baked rubbish and car exhausts are having their effect now. Strangely though, the air seems thinner. There’s nothing in it to breathe. I hate August. And beyond it, only winter.

      Nothing to take my mind off it but Colin. The most unlikely stories are the sweetest ones. We haven’t got over it yet, we keep saying, ‘Wow’ and ‘I can’t believe I’ve found you’ and ‘Just say I hadn’t felt brave’. We have been lovers for six months now and have slipped into an easy intimacy. It amazes me (but only in retrospect) how reality shifts and is just accepted. I no longer hesitate before I say the words ‘my boyfriend’. Now when I go to Edward’s house, I don’t sleep in Lily’s Room, but with Colin – in the best pink spare on the second floor.

      Of course, I took my life in my own hands when I went off to meet him – it’s something we fondly laugh about now. When I rang him he said ‘I didn’t think you’d call,’ and I said, ‘Neither did I.’ Surely though, such a spontaneous gesture deserved a return. More than this I was flattered and it had to go somewhere. It wouldn’t be much of a story would it? if ‘And what happened then?’ was followed by ‘Nothing’. Memories are things you have to earn. Besides, I wasn’t playing that high-risk a strategy, rapists and murderers are not the majority. I met him in a public place on a Saturday afternoon. What did we talk about? I can’t remember now – everything. No. Nothing I’d ever talked about before. And Josh likes him.

      The underground’s a strange setting for a love scene and not one that I would have chosen. Tonight I’m on it to go to meet Edward. It’s so hot that I’ve not bothered to fight for a seat but am standing by the window to the carriage next door. It’s open for ventilation but it always makes me laugh, the thought of ventilation down here. If I stand the right way round my hair is in my eyes and up my nose, so I’m standing the wrong way round with it blowing off my face and I’m looking into the neighbouring car. Another set of possibilities in there. Perhaps it would have made all the difference if I’d been on that side and looking in here – if I’d been just five feet further down that day, Colin would never have seen me – so do things happen because they’re supposed to? or just because they can? Chances are, it’s possible.

      Edward and I are going for a walk after work in the park. In the winter these are reserved for Sunday afternoons, when he doesn’t seem to notice that it’s raining and freezing cold. On the way back we get stuck in the week-again traffic. He says, ‘C’mon c’mon c’mon; c’mon c’mon c’mon; c’mon c’mon c’mon’ over and over under his breath like a mantra. At his flat we sit in front of his lookalike fire and drink tea (if I can be bothered to make it). He cleans his shoes on the Sunday magazines and makes me read to him from their papers. He lends me a dry pair of socks (which I never return) and I catch the train home. Sometimes he walks me to the station.

      The park is a long way by underground, until it becomes overground and almost until the end of the line. Tonight though I suppose I’m enjoying it. It’s quite nice, this breeze on my face and those people to watch and this film in my head where I’ve spent the next six months in love with Colin. And it’s so bizarre down here. It’s science fiction. Shunting through tunnels under the earth and in the dark (it’s always dark in science fiction). It reminds me of those pictures for children where the earth’s sliced through: here are the people walking the streets and here are the people travelling beneath. So many people, like bunnies in burrows, like patients on their way to some spooky experiment in a secret laboratory. And not one of them taking any notice of me. If I made such an impression on Colin why not so on them?

      I’m making a mental note not to talk to Edward about Colin – he is a purist when it comes to conversations. The problem with mine, according to him, is their tendency to be experience-led. He doesn’t like to know what I’ve ‘been up to’, he’s not the least bit interested in plot – if I try to tell him he’ll say, ‘This isn’t a conversation, Lily, it’s a soliloquy.’ So to get his views on the subject I’ll have to couch it in altogether different terms. I’ll have to conceptualise. Colin will have to become a debate about – I don’t know quite what yet. I’ve got three more stops to work it out.

      Edward and I have been coming to this park ever since we met. It’s a pastime which belongs to him though and not to me. I’m sure he brings other people on similar trips while I’d never dream of coming with other than him. It’s his place. He’s never said so, though. It’s his possession and he has no need to point it out. When we first became friends we’d fill our pockets with bottles of beer and walk up the hill to see the sun set. We’d sit and watch it getting drunk on its glory, mostly in silence but pointing out the occasional flash of colour till it had ended. Then, humbled, Edward would give his views on how he’d have improved it.

      There he is waiting for me in the front of his car. He’s in his usual position, feet on the steering wheel, bum in midair, swapping his suit for something more suited to walking. No attempt at discretion. I can tell by the way he’s yanking on his jeans that he’s not in good temper. Well, he never is for the first five minutes, like he finds it hard to make the change from his own good company to someone else. He glares at my feet as I get in beside him, I say, ‘I’ve got my trainers in my bag.’

      ‘We’re going for a stomp, Lily, do you know what that means? It means working your lazy blood around your lazy body, working up a sweat, moving fast and covering a lot of distance and if there’s even the smallest chance that you’re going to make me cut it short because your feet hurt, then you’d better get out now.’

      ‘You always lay