‘Go away,’ I told him, stretching my neck to peer around him at the TV screen.
‘We need to talk,’ Billy said.
‘Yeah, but we don’t,’ I replied, sulkily. ‘What we need is for you to sod off back where you came from.’
‘I will go away, if you want me to,’ Billy said softly, perching on the arm of a chair. ‘But I honestly think it would be better if we talked.’
‘Oh, just, go and talk to Siobhan or something,’ I said, wincing at how adolescent I was sounding even to myself. What can I say? I was seventeen.
‘YouknowI don’t do monogamy,’ Billy said, sounding reasonable, or at least trying to sound like someone who was being reasonable. ‘We talked about this, didn’t we? We had a conversation about it down in the New Forest.’
This was true, but also not true. Because, yes, Billy and his mates had chatted about monogamy, around the campfire, down in Bodmin. And yes, I’d heard him say what a stupid medieval concept he thought it was.
But no one could call that a conversation, could they? Because no one had asked me howIfelt.
‘Aren’t you going to say anything?’ Billy asked.
‘I thought we were boyfriend/girlfriend,’ I said, and again I hated myself for how immature the words sounded.
‘We are,’ Billy said. ‘If you want us to be, we are. But like I said, I don’t do exclusivity. I don’t believe in it, and I don’t think you do either, not really.’
I shrugged because I didn’t know whether I believed in it or not. ‘I don’t know what that’s even supposed to mean,’ I muttered, still staring straight past him at the screen.
‘It means you’re free,’ Billy said, and the thought of being free made me want to cry. I didn’t want to be free. I wanted to belong to, to be owned by, him. He was so beautiful, so clever, so creative, so confident, so unlike anyone else I’d ever met. What was the point in being free to meet other people?
‘It means you’re free, and I’m free,’ he continued. ‘Free to see each other whenever we want, and free to see other people too. Don’t you want to be free?’
I shrugged again and swallowed with difficulty.
Billy sighed deeply. ‘D’you still want me to sod off?’
I shrugged again, but topped it off with a vague nod, not because I wanted him to leave so much as because I wanted this confusing, upsetting conversation to end.
‘OK then,’ Billy said. ‘Sure. Whatever. Just let me know when you’re ready to talk.’
He walked to the doorway then, but returned and laid one hand on my shoulder, giving it a squeeze. ‘Don’t look so glum,’ he said. ‘It’s not the end of the world. You’ll see that once you’ve calmed down. It’s not the end of the world, at all.’
I shrugged beneath his hand so he released me.
‘Bye then,’ he said.
As he opened the front door and stepped outside, I started to cry again, because I realised that I didn’t want him to leave at all.
Mum woke me up the next morning. She didn’t say a word, simply letting herself into my bedroom and perching on the edge of the bed. She vaguely rearranged the items on my bedside table and then, saying, ‘Shove over,’ she lay down beside me.
‘What?’ I asked. This was not a regular occurrence.
Mum sighed. ‘Wayne says you’ve been moping around.’
‘Wayne?’ I snorted. ‘He never leaves his bloody room. He never stops playing Nintendo.’
‘No? Well, he left it for long enough to notice you were moping around,’ Mum said. ‘And long enough to tell me. So what’s happening? You got trouble in paradise?’
I groaned and rolled away from her. For a moment, when I’d first woken up, I’d forgotten how wrong everything had gone. But now here it was – my misery whacking me around the chops like a wet towel.
Mum followed my movement and rolled so that she was spooning me. She laid one arm across my chest and pulled me tight.
‘Stop it,’ I said. ‘You’re scaring me.’ But she could tell from my voice that I secretly liked it, I think. At any rate, she didn’t move.
