Playing with the Grown-ups Read online

  Suzette rolled her eyes at him.

  'No, she doesn't. They look totally different. Katie's more interesting,' she smirked.

  'It's Kitty,' Kitty said.

  Jake sat smoking, half looking at her. When she dared to look back he had dropped his eyes. If I can just wait, Kitty thought, for everyone else to go, we'll be alone. Minute by hour, she willed them, leave.

  At 7 a.m. as the cruel dawn crept in and she was beginning to despair, Tommy, the last man standing, said, yawning, 'I've got college. Kit, shall we share a cab?'

  She gave him a pointed stare.

  'Oh. Right. Bye.'

  He stumbled out, and she was alone, with him.

  Jake and Kitty sat on the sofa like wooden matches. Con had run off after Suzette, who had left with a face threatening tears.

  They sat, the silence unbearable.

  'Do you want me to give you a massage?' Kitty asked, her voice sounding alien in the empty flat.

  'Yeah, OK,' Jake said.

  She rubbed his back under his shirt. It was smooth and warm. Awkwardly, he grabbed her face and kissed her, eyes squeezed shut. His mouth dry, their teeth mashing together.

  I'm kissing Jake, her brain said triumphantly. He held her in a stiff embrace that had potential.

  'I should go to school,' Kitty said, wanting him to say, No, don't, skive, we'll go to the park and have a picnic.

  'Yeah, I need some kip,' he said. 'Do you want a jumper?'

  She looked down at her dress: her breasts were more suited to a nightclub than a classroom. She felt cheap.

  'Get one from my bedroom,' he said.

  His cupboard was the only place in the flat that was tidy. Kitty found a blue jumper that looked replaceable. Her eyes were drawn to a stack of Playbqs, a safe and a big hunting knife. She shut the door quickly, pulled the jumper over her dress. Jake was on the sofa, asleep. His fingers twitched a bit.

  'Goodnight. Sweet dreams,' Kitty said.

  Wardour Street was grey and drizzly, but the light was forgiving. She walked all the way to school, early for once, too elated to be paranoid or tired. She had kissed Jake Brown, essentially stayed the night with him, and taken drugs with her mother and her friends. This was life, Kitty thought.

  When she got home her mother was taking a nap.

  'She's got a headache,' Nora informed her.

  Kitty was desperate to wake her mother and go over the night, reliving it, detail by detail. She kept pacing loudly past her bedroom door, coughing like an old harridan.

  Violet passed her.

  'You look like a dead fish,' she said. Violet gave her a suspicious look and marched into her bedroom.

  'I thought we could have a little dinner party.' Her mother lay with a packet of frozen peas on her face. 'On Friday, with those friends of yours. Maybe Con could leave that annoying girlfriend at home.'

  'Maybe,' Kitty said distractedly. The thought of Jake at the kitchen table was foreign and frightening. She'd never seen him eat.

  'I'd have to get Tommy to ring them,' she said. 'I mean, I don't know them that well, to ring them, you know.' She felt worried.

  Her mother lifted the peas up and smiled.

  'I think that Jake really likes you, Magpie. He kept looking at you.'

  Kitty telephoned Tommy immediately.

  'My mother wants everyone from last night to come to dinner,' she said, 'and she wants you to call the Browns.'

  'Your mother is a real weirdo. Why would ANYONE want the Browns to come to dinner? They're really uncivilised people. The Browns don't have dinner, they just go to nightclubs and cane it . . .'

  'Well, they're your friends. Just do it, please?'

  Tommy thought for a moment, as Kitty bit her nails.

  'Fine,' he said darkly. 'Weirdo.'

  Her mobile rang at eleven o'clock. She didn't know the number, but she knew in her tremulous heart it was Jake. She let it ring three times, as her mother taught her, holding her breath until she picked up, blushing.

  'Helllooo?' Kitty breathed low into the phone like Marilyn Monroe.

  'Kitty, it's Con Brown.' Her heart swam down to her feet like a bottom-feeding fish.

  'Hi, Con,' Kitty said, trying to keep the defeat from her voice. 'Hi.'

  'So - yeah, we'll come to dinner,' Con said.

  Kitty told him the address. She felt nauseous. Who was the NE he spoke of?

  'By the way, Kitty,' he said in a hushed and silky voice. 'I know you like Jake.'

  She felt the panic bubbling in her like a pan of milk about to spill over.

  'Jake knows too. And here's the thing - if you put in a good word with your mum, I'll sort you out with Jake, OK?' He laughed a little bit. 'See you on Friday - bye!'

  She tried to sound cheery as she hung up.

  Her mother walked into her bedroom. She didn't look remotely hungover. She looked wan and charming.

  'So are they coming?' she asked smugly as one who knew they were.

  'Yes,' Kitty said. She started to cry.

  'What is it?' her mother said. 'I thought it would be good if they came. I thought I was doing you a favour, inviting Con and Jake.'

  'It doesn't matter,' Kitty shouted. 'And Con Brown fancies you.'

  'Don't be silly, Kitty,' her mother said. 'He's a young boy.' But her eyes glittered. 'I'll cook lamb,' she said. 'That's good boy food.'

  'I don't care!' Kitty wailed. 'I'm a fucking vegetarian! Please turn the light off on your way out.' She buried herself under the covers. After a while she heard her mother leave, saying sadly again, 'I thought it would be good . . .'

  Kitty could not sleep. Her side of the bed was too hot and close, the other side achingly empty.

  The memory of Jake's kiss, so real an hour ago, had shaken away from her, now shadowy like paper, something that was not hers to begin with.

  Marina gave Kitty the day off school the night of the dinner party. She also gave Nora the weekend off, and dispatched Sam and Violet to a schoolfriend's.

  'So it's just us girls,' she said, her tone suggesting that Kitty would know what she was talking about.

  She called a beautician named Julie who came and painted both their nails, Kitty's blood red, near black, and her mother's a soft baby pink.

  'I think you should wear your hair up,' her mother said. 'It looks so beautiful when it's up. And I think you should wear that little pink knit dress I got you from Ralph Lauren. Con left a message to say Suzette can't come. She's busy. It was so sweet, he sounded so gruff and grown-up on the phone.'

  Jake never arrived. Con kept saying, vaguely, 'Yeah, I spoke to him earlier - he said he's definitely on his way.'

  But when he hadn't shown up by three she knew he wasn't coming. She had made a chocolate mousse for him. It sat uneaten in the fridge. The sight of it depressed her. The next day, Kitty wanted to ring Honor and tell her, but as she dialled the number she remembered that they weren't friends any more.

  Her phone rang but it was never the voice she wanted. Jake eluded Kitty, like the night creature he was. She went to all the old familiar places and saw glimpses of him in other people, the curve of his nose, a glint of burnished brown hair, the quick smile, but they were all imposters. Con, she saw everywhere. It made her hate him more than she had previously. In his smirk, Kitty saw a million judgements, conversations she had not been privy to. She hated him for knowing the secrets of her heart.

  When she was on her own, in her room at night, she thought that someone else's fate had entered her like an incubus. Crept up in the night, and stolen into her soul, breathing badness through her blood. Sometimes she washed her face with her mother's holy water from Lourdes. She wanted to be a good sister and take Violet and Sam to Ed's Diner for chocolate milkshakes on a Saturday morning, but she could never wake up in time. They knocked on her bedroom door and Kitty pretended she couldn't hear.

  She borrowed twenty pounds housekeeping from Nora. They sat on the train from Clapham Junction and outside it was grey and the houses all looked
the same. Violet and Sam chattered to her about a book they were reading called Stig of the Dump.

  'Can you just be quiet?' Kitty said. 'I'm taking you out, aren't I? You're giving me such a headache.'

  She sat in silence with her arms crossed. Their eyes became round and watchful, and they were guarded and very polite, each quiet please and thank you a jab in Kitty's heart.

  'I don't mean to be cross; I went to bed really late,' she whispered.

  'Isn't that a treat?' Sam asked, in a hushed voice.

  She wanted to ask, Why do you both trust me? Why do you both trust me when I don't trust myself?

  They sat, such little perfect people, the thoughts in their heads left dangling with nowhere to go. They looked silently out of the windows at the people going by, and Kitty thought her heart might break.

  She wished they were back in New York playing spy games, or climbing trees in the orchard at Hay, a lone hot-air balloon sailing across the sky, as they played at guessing where it was destined.

  Chapter Eleven

  I have a new friend who's a princess.' Her mother lay back in the bath, blowing smoke rings.

  'A real princess? With a castle?' Violet watched her intently from the floor as her rabbit ran around the bathroom.

  'Yes. A real-life princess. She's an artist, she was at my colony. She has a castle in Italy. Violet, your rabbit is chewing on my Clarins face cream. . . Please pick him up.'

  'It's a she,' Violet said.

  'My friend is BISEXUAL,' Marina mouthed to Kitty. 'She's coming over for tea tomorrow.'

  Kitty had never met a princess, or someone who boasted about being bisexual. She wondered whether she could glean either thing by just looking at Marianne.

  Marianne was not a real princess; she was a raven-haired beauty from Surrey who had married a louche Italian prince whose peccadillo was opium and transvestites.

  'You can't imagine what it was like, living in exile in Siena. The family had cut us off, the roof was falling in, and Oberto was nodding into his risotto as young boys wearing MY jewellery flitted in and out,' she said loudly. 'It was where I discovered painting. It was my only outlet. I started selling my paintings to tourists and as soon as I had enough money I got the bloody hell out.' She pushed her fringe back from her doll face. 'It was ghastly.'

  Kitty stared at her, with her mouth open.

  'Poor thing,' her mother said sympathetically. 'Would you like a biscuit? Stop staring, Kitty.'

  'No, darling. Can't. I shall be fat, and no one will want me.' She pondered the Jaffa Cakes with rue.

  Marianne and her mother whispered and giggled like schoolgirls. They had inside jokes and locked the door to her mother's bedroom. They constantly praised each other's merits and talked of nothing but men and parties.

  'I don't like Marianne. She's rude, and she makes Mum be silly,' Violet said to Kitty, on a locked-door night.

  'I agree.' Kitty thought that she would be a phase, but Marianne had become a stalwart fixture.

  Violet finished painting her nails acid green. It looked like she had a disease spilling from her fingertips.

  'Sam doesn't like her either. He says her eyes are like a witch's. They are, if you look, they're yellow and wicked. She pretends to be nice, but you can tell she's not.'

  Nora was watching Doctor Who, sitting tidily in her old crimson armchair. They couldn't see her face: her back was to them. A plume of smoke rose with her voice, and she said, 'I don't like her either.'

  Nora was the master of objectivity. Kitty sat up in surprise.

  'Marianne must be really bad then, because Nora likes EVERYONE.' Sam pointed his fingers like a gun to his head.

  In the shadows of Kitty's room, hangmen loomed, the oak outside became a lynching tree.

  Her mother locked her bedroom door again and she and Marianne sat inside, talking of hushed things in careful hushed voices.

  Kitty knocked on the door, trying hard not to sound plaintive or desperate as she said, 'Mummy, can I come in?' Her mother said if you played hard to get people wanted you more.

  'I'm having grown-up time, Kitty. Come back later.'

  'We're telling our secrets!' Marianne shouted, as though it was a joke.

  'I tell you all my fucking secrets!' Kitty shouted.

  There was a silence, after which she heard her mother say, 'Teenagers!' in a tone that was both patronising and bored.

  She went to her room, covered her mouth with a pillow and screamed. She decided she would have her own grown-up time. In her jewellery box she had a two-gram wrap of coke, which Charlie had left in her handbag the last time they went to Iceni. She racked out two long lines on her dressing table, and put 'Killing in the Name' by Rage Against the Machine on her CD player. She turned the volume up as loud as it would go. She lay on the floor, her head splintering with words, and realised with frustration she had no one to talk to. Her feet were numb.

  She decided to do a fashion show for herself and pulled out everything from her wardrobe and put it on the floor. She tried on an old Alaia dress of her mother's that was too small and she sucked in her cheekbones and her stomach. To her reflection Kitty said, 'Hello, princess.' She didn't know why she said this but she said it in a cockney accent, which made her laugh at herself.

  Kitty knew Rosaria would think it was funny too so she rang her.

  'Are you coming to my birthday party this weekend?' Rosaria asked.

  Kitty had forgotten it was her birthday.

  'Yes, if I can get enough money for the train. I spent my allowance,' she said.

  Rosaria sounded like she was going to cry.

  'Mummy says she'll buy you a ticket, Kit. Are you all right? You sound so weird.'

  'Cool. Then I can come. I'm fine. I'm having a fashion show on my own in my bedroom. Everything's great.' She spun again.

  'What's that ghastly racket in the background? Are you at a festival with the beardy weirdies again?' Rosaria liked the Bangles and Right Said Fred.

  'Rage Against the Machine, man. So I'll come up on Friday evening 'kay?' Kitty said.

  'All right, babes. Are you sure you're all right?' Rosaria asked.

  'Yup. Fine. Wicked,' Kitty said.

  'Wicked indeed. You have got to go back to public school.'

  Kitty heard Rosaria's brothers in the background.

  'I have to go,' Rosaria said. 'Mayhem here. Love you.'

  'I love you too.' Kitty truly meant it.

  Her mother screamed outside the door. 'Will you turn that fucking music down?!'

  'I'm sorry.' Kitty said. 'Speak up. I can't really hear you.'

  'Turn it DOWN!' she said, rattling the doorknob. 'You're giving me a headache!'

  'Why don't you call the doctor?' Kitty shouted through the door. 'Isn't that what you do when you have a headache?'

  'What are you doing in there?' her mother said, and she sounded lonely.

  'I'm having grown-up time. That includes loud music and self-expression.' Kitty twirled around in her dress, crazily.

  'Why are you punishing me?' her mother asked forlornly. Marianne had clearly gone home.

  'Because that's what you get,' Kitty whispered.

  Rosaria's house smelled like Christmas. Her room was on the top floor and they listened to Massive Attack while they got ready. Kitty sat in the bath, reading a Jilly Cooper book while Rosaria blow-dried her hair, a complicated process that involved heated rollers and a lot of hairspray.

  'Marcus Chapman's coming tonight,' she said wistfully. Rosaria had nurtured a crush on Marcus Chapman for six years.

  'Why don't you just get royally pissed and jump on him?' Kitty said.

  'I can't. It would ruin our friendship. I'll just have to continue loving him from afar. What on earth have you done to your pubes, Kitty?'

  'I put Immac on them while I was on the phone, and forgot it was on, and then there was this horrid burning smell, and I ran to wash it off, by which stage it was too late and all of my pubes had been burnt to a crisp, so now I look
like a bald egret,' Kitty said.

  'You have the pudenda of a ten-year-old,' Rosaria cackled.

  'I know. It's really revolting. Good thing no one's going to be investigating down there any time soon. Will you dry my hair like yours? It looks lovely.'

  'Yes. If you'll do my make-up,' Rosaria said.

  'Do you want to do a line of coke? I've got some,' Kitty said, nonchalant.

  'Kitty!' Rosaria's mouth made a big curly 0. 'Where did you get it?'

  'From a friend,' she said. 'Actually that's a lie. My mother told me if I took Violet and Sam to school she'd give it to me. She wanted to lie in, and it was Nora's day off.' She laughed to show Rosaria that it was all right.

  Rosaria handed her a towel.

  'How long has your mother been doing coke?' she asked quietly.

  'I think she just does it occasionally. Like if she's going to a party or something. I don't think it's a big deal. A lot of people I know do it.' Kitty shrugged.

  'But your own mother doing it is different,' Rosaria said.

  'Your mother smokes dope.' Kitty stared at her.

  'Yes, but she's a hippy. And dope is different somehow.'

  'Well, we don't need to get into the semantics,' Kitty said. 'Do you want to try it or not?' She felt like a nasty drug pusher.

  Rosaria set her lips defiantly.

  'I'll try it,' she said. 'But you can't tell anyone. My friends would really disapprove.'

  'That's because your friends are prudish and boring. I'm your fun friend,' Kitty said.

  Rosaria raised a thick black eyebrow at her.

  'You'll have to show me what to do,' she said.

  Kitty made two neat lines and chopped them smooth with Rosaria's Barclaycard. She bent over one.

  'So you hold your hair back, stick the note up your nose, and snort, hard,' she said, and proceeded to do it, theatrically.

  'It's not working,' Rosaria said a few minutes later. 'I don't feel any different.'

  Kitty started to have a creeping feeling that her mother had supplied her with fraudulent coke, but she didn't want to share this thought with Rosaria.

  'Maybe you've just got a high tolerance. Maybe you're Chichester's answer to Tony Montana. Let's get pissed instead,' she said.