Remix. Part 15

Reality rushes in and I shove him, hard, using all of my weight to push myself as far away from him as I can and I'm burrowing, squeezing, elbowing my way through the crowd until I'm out of the tent and under the sun once more, as far from Stu as I can get. My chest is tight with something approaching panic and I'm forced to lie flat on the floor, hoping no one has vommed there yet. Closing my eyes, I concentrate on the flashes of colours in the darkness of my eyelids, counting my breaths until they're normal again. Until I am normal again.

KAZ.

Lauren is surprisingly easy to get along with. Even disregarding the fact that she is Tom's girlfriend and I am the girl with whom he cheated, I'm awkward around new people. Yet the girl next to me has no problem talking to me as if I'm someone she knows.

I wish I'd known her before last night.

Cold shame rinses through me at the thought of what I've done, but there's nothing I can do to change it. Either I can spend the rest of the day serving my penance with bouts of useless regret, or I can let go of the things I can't change and focus on the things I can. Being a friend to Lauren today might not make up for what I did last night, but it's better than nothing.

"What do you think?" Lauren turns to me with a fake flower garland resting on her head.

"Beautiful." I mean it Lauren is very pretty.

"I meant for you!" She places one on my head and smiles, a single dimple emerging on her left cheek. "Let's get them."

And before I can stop her, she's bought the pair, telling me to stand still as she secures mine with grips from her own hair. Then she pulls me in for a selfie that she wants to send to the Festblog feed.

"Please don't," I say, thinking of my photo-unfriendly double chin looming over my friends on the hill like the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man from Ghostbusters.

"Why not?" Her thumb pauses over the send b.u.t.ton.

"I don't really like how I look in photos," I say.

"OK." She shrugs and closes the photo, but then doesn't quite look up when she adds, "But you're a lot prettier than you think you are."

The only people who ever tell me I'm pretty are my mum and my best friend, neither of whom count because they're blinded by loyalty. I don't know what blindness Lauren is afflicted with, but I can't help feeling flattered.

RUBY.

I have spent all summer shutting down my memories of Stu. Last night I fought with everything I had to stop the floodgates from opening, but after that moment in the crowd it's impossible.

For the next two minutes let's say five I officially give myself permission to hurt/remember/do whatever needs to be done, but after that, I will get up and walk away, leaving the pain here, a chalk outline of misery on the gra.s.s, like the scene of a crime.

His eyes.

His touch.

His smell, just there, where his neck meets his shoulder, where my lips would rest on his collarbone and my nose against the softest part of his throat.

The way my skin would turn static when he was close, ready for the spark that came when we touched.

The time we portmanteaued our names into Stuby and couldn't stop laughing at how lame it sounded.

Talking about music, lying on our sides, noses almost touching, or in his car, the windows down and the stereo up...

Him teaching me how to peel a satsuma so the skin comes off in the shape of a c.o.c.k and b.a.l.l.s.

Showing him my portfolio of line work I'd been developing, copying tattoos I found on Google Images, geometric patterns and tessellations drawing, drawing until I found a style of my own.

Him handing me a Sharpie marker and asking me to draw him a new tattoo and the anatomical heart I drew on his chest with an arrow through it: Stu hearts Ruby. A week later he'd turned my design into a T-shirt for my birthday. Just the heart and the arrow, positioned over the left of my chest. No words necessary.

The evenings when all I wanted was to be held and told that Lee leaving my house was not Lee leaving my life and it didn't matter that I'd never be the daughter my parents wanted me to be so long as I was the person I wanted to be.

But none of that added up to enough to keep him faithful and I force myself to relive the memory of Stu sitting astride the wall that borders the dunes, facing me but looking through me, eyes sad, voice deadened. The chill I felt because I knew what he was going to say and the ache it turned into as he found the words to tell me that he'd slept with someone else.

I play it over and over and over and over until my time is up.

Until the memory of the time after that sneaks in. The time Stu turned up at my door. I tried to slam it in his face, but Stu was too fast and too strong.

"Please. Five minutes."

I let him in as far as the lounge, where I sat on the armchair and Stu picked the closest corner of the couch.

"What do you want, Stu?" I kept my eyes trained on the patch of carpet where Ed spilled red wine at Christmas. You can only tell if you know to look for it.

"You."

I made the mistake of looking up. Stu looked rough, dark under the eyes and more than a five-o'clock shadow on his jaw. He played with his labret piercing as he watched me.

"If you really wanted me," I said, "you wouldn't have-" I stalled ... rebooted. "You wouldn't have s.h.a.gged someone else."

Stu looked down at his fingers then back at me. His gaze was so sharp that it hooked into me, pulling me towards him. "You knew what I was like when we got together. You knew I didn't do relationships until I met you. Five months, Ruby. I'd barely lasted five days before then. I'd never met someone I wanted to stay faithful to-"

"Why did you stop wanting to?"

"What?" He frowned before catching up. "I didn't. I was angry hurt and I was drunk and it was too easy. She was all over me..."

"Could you stop talking, please?" I said, wishing I could erase the echo of his words in my head. "I don't need to hear this."

"But you do. I want you to understand that it meant nothing to me at all. She meant nothing." He dropped off the sofa so he was kneeling on the floor in front of me, his face level with mine.

"How is that better? That you were happy to throw away everything for someone whose name you can't even remember?" I'd started crying, wishing desperately, uselessly, that I could stop. I don't cry.

"We don't have to throw it away. I'm sorry, Ruby. I f.u.c.king love you." He stopped. Swallowed. His fingers rested on either side of my face, our foreheads touching as he looked me in the eyes. "I. Love. You." I blinked away the tears that blurred my vision. "I have never loved anyone before you."

But I believed him even less than when he'd first said it.

"Your five minutes is up," I said.

17 * PRETEND BEST FRIEND

KAZ.

There's cl.u.s.ters of people spread out across the gra.s.s around the Heavy Tent and it takes a while to find a s.p.a.ce. Once we do, Lauren embarks upon making a daisy chain whilst I hold up my flower crown, framing the central peak of the tent against the sky, and take a photo to send to Mum.

All good here. How was your date last night?

It doesn't take long for her to reply: Good. He enjoyed the ca.s.soulet you cooked.

I almost choke in horror as I hammer away at my phone. YOU LET HIM COME TO YOUR HOUSE ON A FIRST DATE? THAT'S REALLY DANGEROUS!!!

It's like she's never watched Silent Witness or Luther or CSI. All of which she's got entered on her dating profile as her favourite TV shows.

Who said it was a first date?

I'm confused. Who did you send me a photo of?

That was tonight's one, the one I need the red clutch for. That *is* a first date. Last night was Tony. You'd already vetted him.

Mum has a curious definition of "vet" I've never met any of these men.

Don't invite tonight's one round to the house.

Her reply's as fast as if she's actually sitting next to me: s.e.x at his, then?

"I give up." I murmur the words as I type.

"On what?" Lauren holds up a chain of four daisies and pulls a face at it.

"My mum. She invited a man from the Internet over to her house. For dinner," I add, since I don't want Lauren getting the wrong impression about my mum. (Even though it would be an accurate one.) "Your mum dates men off the Internet?"

"Doesn't everyone's?" I feel a bit defensive, having inadvertently opened up my mum's love life for review, but Lauren just laughs.

"I hope not! Mine's married to my dad."

Sometimes I forget that other people have normal parents. Parents who don't give their daughters boxes of condoms and rape alarms as presents. Parents who think a boyfriend in the hand is better than ten at a festival. Parents who know when the cat needs flea treatment and how to reset tripped fuses.

Even with my help, the daisy chain is only two links longer when there's an especially discordant crash of guitars that fades to feedback and people start to emerge from the Heavy Tent, surrounded in a miasma of dust and gently steaming skin.

"Hottie alert." Lauren whistles through her teeth exactly the way Ruby would, before glancing nervously at me. "Don't tell Tom I said that."

As if Tom has any grounds for objection.

"My lips are sealed." I link the ends of our rather woeful chain together and look up. "Where?"

"Twelve o'clock. Looks kind of familiar..." She's frowning.

When I look up, my heart sinks. It's Stu. He's walking in this direction, talking to someone obscured from view by a clot of burly metal-heads wearing an ill-judged amount of black leather. The vest Stu's wearing is ripped along the seam and as he twists to say something to his companion, the material flaps open to reveal the dark fingers of his tattoo curled around his side like a giant clawed hand. Watching him approach is like seeing a magnet dragged through iron filings with every girl's attention aligning as he pa.s.ses.

Next to me, Lauren murmurs, "Be still, my beating ovaries." Which I find disappointing I always imagine a Venn diagram of people who fancy Stu and people who fancy Tom to be two entirely exclusive circles.

"You know Stuart Garside, then?" I ask, surprised. Lauren told me she lives in the next town inland and goes to a completely different school from anyone I know in Clifton.

Lauren waggles her hand. "I know the name. And the face."

I guess Stu's reputation carries further than I thought.

"Who's that he's with?" she asks, and with dismay I realize who it is.

"That's Owen," I say. "One of the boys we're camping with."

Owen and Stu are about to walk right past us when Lauren asks, "Shouldn't you say something?"

Reluctantly, I stand and call for Owen.

Owen scans the surrounding area as he approaches, clearly relieved at the lack of Ruby. Stu's expression is less easy to interpret.

"Owen, this is Lauren. Lauren, this is Owen. We like Owen." Owen reaches out to shake Lauren's hand, sees the dirt that's gathered in the creases of his palm and retracts it into a wave, before wiping his hands on his shorts. Stu watches me, eyebrows c.o.c.ked as I mutter, "This is Stu. We're not so keen on him."

This time it's Lauren leaning in for a handshake as she says, "Hi. I'm Lauren."

Stu meets her eye. "Oh, I know who you are." Lauren blinks at him in flattered surprise so that she doesn't see his attention flicker to me. "I know your boyfriend, Tom."

I think back to the undercurrent of unspoken things that pa.s.sed between him and Tom last night and I feel like strangling him. And Tom. And possibly myself for being so stupid. I'm very throttle-happy today.

Lauren is so flummoxed by this recognition that when Stu asks where Tom is, I'm the one forced to reply although my one-word answer of "Hospital" is enough to prompt Lauren into a lengthier explanation.

"... Kaz has been awesome, letting me tag along with her so I might actually get to see some bands. Plus it's about time we got to know each other." She beams brightly in my direction as if I'm someone worthy of knowing.

I feel anything but and when Stu's eyes flash with amus.e.m.e.nt, the thought of him seeing the way I was around Tom last night crawls under my skin until I actually have to scratch.