She leaned her forehead against his collarbone, squeezing shut her eyes as if it would be easier if she couldn’t see him, and took a deep breath. ‘You know that I dropped out of uni in my first year? I had problems with some people.’ She swallowed down her thudding heart. ‘They were known as the Coven, this group. They appointed themselves arbiters of popularity; decided who was in and who was out. They had this well cruel sense of humour. You were OK if they thought you were cool, and OK if they ignored you, but if theypickedon you – they just made life hideous.’ Her voice was muffled.
He kissed her hair. ‘Girls can be bitches.’
Moisture leaked from her eyes and onto his T-shirt, anxiety rising in her throat. ‘The Coven weren’t girls. They were all clever and good-looking blokes – and hateful! Patrick and Lucas were the leaders. They’d select somebody and ridicule them constantly, for entertainment. The somebody was me.’
She hid her eyes against him. ‘It sounds so childish. But they condemned every aspect of my life, my clothes, music, car, accent, hair, skin, body. I began to smoke dope. I’d never smoked it before but some of the girls thought it would help me chill. It didn’t. I had a thing with Lucas and the Coven used it to spread lies about my supposed perversions. I smoked and smoked but I couldn’t chill. I couldn’t not care.’
She choked on a sob. ‘I got terrible downers. And as the coming down got worse and worse, I smoked more and more.’
‘Cannabis would only fuck you up more, you poor little sod.’ He rocked her in his arms. ‘Those shitty bastards. I’d like to rip their fucking heads off.’
The ice of his anger somehow began to make her feel better. ‘Dad came and got me. He wanted to bring in the police, lawyers, make them pay, shave their heads, put them in the stocks. But I just wanted to go home and curl up and forget it.’
George’s arms tightened around her. ‘You can forget it now.’
Being in love with George made Tamzin something she’d pretty much forgotten how to be. Happy.
George was wicked, George was amazing, and every time Tamzin thought about him the space between her shoulder blades prickled and the pit of her stomach felt hot.
So it was a small blow a couple of days later to find him full of what, to him, was good news. ‘Bryony’s going to meet us at the pub, tonight. Be amazin’, we’ve hardly seen her since she came back.’
Tamzin smiled as her heart sank.
It had never really struck her that a lot of George’s friends would have been Bryony’s friends, too, even though first Diane and then George had told her that they’d been buddies all their lives. If she’d thought of Bryony at all it had been as safely out of the way in Purtenon, with Diane, or perhaps visiting Uncle Gareth in hospital.
She hadn’t envisioned her borrowing her parents’ Peugeot and bursting right into the middle of Tamzin’s good time. But there she was, hurling herself at Erica and Marty for joyous, wet-eyed hugs. ‘Oh, oh, it’s so good toseeyou! This is socool.’ And then George, an especially long, meaningful hug. ‘I’ve missed you, Gorgeous.’
George laughed. ‘Yeah, so much you’d forget to email me for weeks ’n weeks.’
Bryony pouted. ‘I didn’t have my own computer, I had to wait to get to a cyber café and there were none near to where I worked. Hello.’ She sat down with a brief smile and nod to Tamzin. George reclaimed his seat and even gave Tamzin back his hand to hold but his eyes and ears were Bryony’s for the next hour as she poured out her life since she’d left Peterborough. ‘The school, the school needed so much doing to it and the children, the children were so beautiful but so poor. We talk about underprivilege here but it’s nothing,nothinglike there.’
Rob, across the table from Tamzin, was the only one to look unimpressed. He even yawned a couple of times. Tamzin, who found yawns contagious, had to struggle to suppress her own, causing Rob to wink conspiratorially at her.
Tamzin liked Rob. There was no bullshit about him, he was just a nice guy who usually had too many zits to shave and the face fuzz didn’t show because his bedhead hair hung all over his face anyway.
Rob began to tell Tamzin about his college course and the part-time job he’d just started at a care home and how, on his first day, he’d somehow managed to kick an elderly man’s stick out of his hand. ‘Luckily I caught him before he hit the deck.’
She grinned. ‘I bet the old ladies love you.’
‘Yeah, as it happens. I put new batteries in their hearing aids for them.’ He nodded towards Bryony and dropped his voice. ‘Bet she wants to come back to the band.’
Tamzin’s lip dropped in dismay. ‘Can she? You’re the drummer, now.’
Rob shrugged, drawing a sad face on the table in spilt beer. ‘Suppose. But bands are democratic. If the others say they want her instead of me, then I’ll, like, have to go. She and Georgie started the band. She’s one of the Jenners of Jenneration.’
‘But she left.’
‘Like that’s going to change anything.’
‘Oh. Right.’ They turned to look at Bryony burbling at the end of the table, looking like a busty imp with her dark eyes and curly hair and curious low-waist jeans with braces that Diane had apparently already been let loose on, judging by the tawny embroidery and silver oval beads.
But it wasn’t long before the burbling had died down to a sputter, and Bryony’s eyes were filling up. Tamzin felt a spear of jealousy to see her put her forehead against George’s shoulder, much as Tamzin had done the day before. ‘I’m pregnant,’ she confessed.
‘No!’ everybody breathed.
And among the gasps of surprise and murmurs sympathy, Tamzin couldn’t help but meet Rob’s eye. He grinned and mimed a drum roll on the tabletop.
At the end of the evening, Tamzin and George saw Bryony to her car. It was dark because some of the streetlights were out; even the moon seemed to be having a bad cloud day. George held Tamzin’s hand, although both Bryony and George were so quiet that Tamzin began to wonder whether they wished she wasn’t there. But Bryony drove straight off and George watched the tail lights disappear. Tamzin had brought her own car, feeling really cool and brave to have brought it all the way into the city. Climbing into the passenger seat, George flung himself back with a sigh.
