‘Let it go!’ Tony shouted, as he navigated the lanes that took them into town, where they’d park near the pub.
‘Nothing to let go. I’m not bothered, I’m not!’
What did bother her, and the thing she found hardest to voice, was the further weakening of the bond between her and Ashleigh. The blurring of the sharp edges of the shape of them. Sharp edges that meant as kids they slid together forming a perfect one. Now, they could get close, but never as close as they were. They were altered, had grown into their own people in a way that she could not, as a child, have envisaged. And it wasn’t only a physical thing, although it was always a little jarring, a surprise to see her blonde, straight-haired sister who from the back was nothing like her. It hurt in a way that was as hard to reconcile as it was to explain. Inevitable, of course, the ageing, the separation, the evolution, and yet that had been her thing, their thing, being special, one seed split in two.
They were now very different people. Very different people whose communication was sporadic and even a little awkward, as it was when you had very little in common with someone’s day-to-day.
One who went to Southend, the other Sardinia ...It wasn’t that she wanted Ashleigh’s life, not at all, but equally, she didn’t want to be written off either. Maybe that law degree would redress the balance. A bubble of excitement rose in her gut at the possibility.
‘You sound abitbothered.’ Tony kept his eyes on the road.
‘I’m not! It just irritates me. Only Ashleigh would go to aball. It always has to be that bit more than anyone else does, a bitgrander than you’ve experienced or seen, a bit more expensive than most of us can afford, and she’s a bloody student. I don’t know how she does it!’
‘A student with a full grant and a very wealthy boyfriend, according to what she was saying when she came home last. His parents were at their house in Italy, and he’d gone sailing.Sailing!’
‘I remember.’ She snorted and pulled a face. ‘But hardly a boyfriend – she’d only been seeing him a few weeks. What was his name?’ She clicked her fingers.
‘Youknowhis name, Remy! Be nice! She is your sister, your twin.’ He shook his head, reminding her so much of her mother it made her chuckle. ‘I miss my brother. I’d give anything to have him close by.’
She knew this to be true; his brother Gregory had emigrated to Australia a couple of years ago and was living and working in Sydney. It sounded brilliant, sunny, warm and, with a beach on his doorstep, what was not to love? But so very far away. The furthest she had ever been was France on a day trip; they’d gone by hovercraft from Dover to Boulogne. It had rained all day, but she’d got to eat a baguette and said ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ at passport control in French. Job done. But who knew where she might travel in the coming years, or what her future might hold? A qualified lawyer with a job in a sunny place ... that’d do.
‘Archibald.Whois called Archibald?’ She changed the topic, not wanting the absence of his brother to be a downer on their evening. ‘Why can’t she have a nice normal boyfriend with a name like Jamie!’
‘At least she has a boyfriend.’ He pulled a face.
‘And as I’ve told you before, darling, we’re waiting for the right ones. We are discerning, not desperate.’ This, her justification for their drought in the man department. She’d had a couple of harmless flings at school, nothing serious, and more often than not went outwith boys because they’d asked rather than because she really liked them. University was, she reckoned, going to offer rich pickings when it came to boys. Her virginity sat around her neck like an eye-catching weighty necklace. She was aware of it, irked by the presence of it at times, and yet in no real hurry to whip it off. It was, she had to admit, hard to meet fabulous and eligible men at the garden centre. Well, that wasn’t strictly true, as she found herself propositioned with offers of afternoon tea or garden walks daily; what she meant was fabulous and eligible men under the age of eighty.
‘I think the trouble is, any potential suitors might think we’re a couple,’ Tony offered without irony.
Turning her head to study her friend, she took in his perfect make-up, his well-tended do, his practised pout, and didn’t mention his affection for Princess Diana or the discreet tattoo on his collarbone that was a homage to his greatest love, Barbra Streisand, her face in profile. ‘Tony, I adore you, but I literally do not thinkanyonewho has met us haseverthought we were a couple!’
‘None taken.’ He sucked his teeth.
The trumpet toot introduction to ‘Geno’ filled the car and she felt her gut swell with excitement at no more than the sound.
‘Love this!Classic!’ She beat her feet on the rubber mat in anticipation.
‘Turn it up!’ Tony yelled. ‘Turn it up!’
She obliged and turned the knob to full volume, until the speakers rattled and threatened to blow.
This is how they travelled, singing and drumming on the steering wheel and dashboard, high on life! High on ‘Geno’!
Ashleigh
Ashleigh felt a little light-headed, but there was no way she was going to eat, not with the waistband of her black taffeta frock sittingso snugly. She loved this dress, and as it hung on her wardrobe door, had run her fingers over the shiny fabric every night before climbing into bed. Excitement kept her awake as she waited desperately to step into the skirt, lift the bodice and zip it right up, counting down the days, knowing Archie was going to practically swoon when he saw her. Changing her body shape was easy: a couple of days of eating little and she felt the sharp bite of her hip bones and her cheekbones seemed to pop.
Archibald Oxton Fitch ...That was the name of the boy she loved. For despite knowing him for mere weeks, love him she did. She loved saying his name, loved telling people all about him, loved the way he looked, the way he spoke and, more than anything, she loved having sex with him. It was a strong and powerful glue that she couldn’t have imagined existed.
Archie wasn’t her first lover, nor her second, third or fourth. The sixth form at St. Jude’s and the first couple of years at Exeter had been a time of discovery. She would always remember those boys fondly, the Davids, the Johns, the Peters and Michaels of the world, who had been fun, and with whom she’d shared experimental flings of the sweetest nature. But if these boys were grey, then Archie was golden! The last few months had taught her that what she had felt for her previous conquests was inconsequential, in no way comparable to the mighty arrow of complete and utter adoration that had skewered her the moment she’d clapped eyes on Archibald Oxton Fitch.
He was blond and smiley with very neat teeth and a gravel to his voice that was almost as intoxicating as the whisky sours they liked to concoct in his tiny student kitchen after a night out.
All the boys that had gone before were now nothing more than smoke in her thoughts, and she could quite confidently say, had anyone asked, that she would be entirely happy if he were her last lover. The last ever. It was a drug. The scent of him, the touch ofhim, the memory of their fabulous and numerous trysts enough for her to want him all over again. She was impatient to learn every inch of him, hungry for his touch. Beyond excited, as they knitted themselves together, building a connection, a union, the prospect of which brought her more joy than anything she had or ever could have imagined. It was impossible to see him, spend time with him, be close to him without sex being their destination, their ending.Impossible ...
The question that kept her awake, when she wasn’t staring at her ball gown or having sex with Archie, was whether he loved her too. She hadn’t said it out loud, and he hadn’t mentioned the word at all. But if he did,whenhe did, she knew it would be the icing on the rather moreish cake.
They had met through Guy, who had casually mentioned over a pint in the Students’ Union that his old school friend from Clifton College had made the transfer from Durham and was joining next term. She had barely given it a second thought, but would forever, with hindsight, be thankful to him. Guy was the boy who had started as no more than someone in her tutor group, a funny, handsome klutz who had seen her name on the registration sheet, written as Brett Ashleigh, and had understandably assumed she was a boy called Brett, and had called her Brett ever since.
