Out of My Depth (11 page)

Janie looked at the crowd, which was now considerable. More of them were sympathetic to her than to Tamsin.

‘Did you hear that?’ she asked, laughing. ‘Nelson Mandela for President? If he’s ever President of South Africa, I will dance naked down Queen’s Street. The man is nothing but a black terrorist, and you are nothing but a red Communist!’ She looked at the audience. ‘De Klerk’s almost as bad, mind. But, Nelson Mandela? Tamsin, you make it too easy. He’ll die in prison. And you can go back to Peking with your Communist friends!’

Most people laughed.

In the car, Tamsin looked at her mother. ‘You teach Janie,’ she said. ‘How can you? Why don’t you get a job at a proper school, where there wouldn’t be so many fascists? Whatever the issues might be, at least normal schools don’t accept fascism. Doesn’t it depress you?’

Her mother fiddled with a strand of greying hair. ‘Don’t misuse “fascism”, Tamsin. It devalues it. I teach her French. That’s all I do. If I taught politics, or religion, or even history or geography, I can see that I’d find it harder. As it is, we just talk about hobbies and transport systems, and Le Grand Meaulnes. And when there are subtexts, Janie doesn’t get them. And you know what, Tam? You make me feel bad. You’re so passionate about things that I believe in too that I feel slightly ashamed of myself because I never bother to pick anyone up on anything any more. I ought to stand up for my principles, like you do. And maybe I should leave Lodwell’s one day and go and teach at a comprehensive. I’ve always said to your dad that when you and Billy leave home, we should go abroad. I’d like to do VSO or something, teach in Africa or India.’

‘Good plan.’

‘I’m sorry you hate school.’

‘Not your fault.’

‘Why don’t you start planning a gap year? Sign up for a programme somewhere. Get out there and make a difference, and meet some like-minded people? Put a big distance between yourself and the Janies of this world.’

Tamsin thought about it. She had never seriously considered a gap year. That must mean she was institutionalised, too.

‘I’ll think about it,’ she conceded.

Meanwhile, she was counting off the days. She had made herself a neat calendar, each month on its own sheet of A4, which she stuck across the wall above her bed. Every single afternoon, she would cross a day off the list as soon as she got home from school. She already felt as if she had been in the sixth form for ever, but the calendar revealed otherwise. It was not quite Christmas. She was almost one-sixth of her way through, which was demoralising.

She threw herself on her bed and thought about homework. There was nothing she had to do for tomorrow, because she had started her English essay in the library earlier. She looked around. Her bedroom was her little domain, and she vowed to get a Nelson Mandela poster for the wall, to go next to her Cry Freedom one. She had the Cure up there, and the Smiths, and U2, although she was considering taking that one down. She was particularly proud of her Ladysmith Black Mambazo picture.

Her clothes were all over the floor, and there were books piled up on every surface. Many of them were overdue library books. Some of them had coffee rings on them, and on the window sill there was a cup she kept forgetting to take downstairs. The small amount of coffee in the bottom of it had first grown a soft skin, and then green mould had started to climb up the sides. It was delicate and rather beautiful, and she kept putting off the day when she would wash it all down the sink.

She had bought a purple Indian bedspread at a junk shop a while ago, although she always forgot to pull it over her bed, so it was usually, as today, crumpled on the floor. In fact, her room was a complete mess. She had only one solution: to go downstairs for some toast. And then she would think about a gap year.

Izzy came by later, on her bike. She was fearless at negotiating the busy road between Dinas and Penarth, and she made no concessions to practicality in her outfits. She turned up in a thick grey skirt that reached her ankles, and a pair of high-heeled black boots. Her helmet was still swinging from her handlebars, where it had encumbered her progress for the three-mile journey. She stood on the doorstep, rosy-cheeked and happy.

‘Railway?’ she asked Tamsin, who picked up her coat and called to her mother.

‘Off to the Railway!’

‘Be home by eleven!’ her father called, from somewhere in the depths of the house.

‘Quick!’ Tamsin shut the door behind her and set off as briskly as she could up the garden path. It was starting to rain, but she didn’t care, partly because the pub was less than five minutes’ walk from her house, and partly because she didn’t look any worse with wet hair than she did with dry. They had almost reached the corner, with Izzy pushing her bike, when Tamsin heard fast footsteps behind them.

Billy was out of breath. He caught up, and Tamsin turned and looked daggers at him.

‘Can I come?’ he asked hopefully. He took something from his pocket. ‘Look!’ he said, straightening a ten-pound note and showing it to the girls. ‘It’s my round!’

Tamsin looked at her brother. He was fifteen and annoying. She did not want to be seen in the pub with him, and normally he wouldn’t be seen in her company, either. He was, however, infatuated with Izzy, which meant that whenever Isabelle was nearby, hostilities were suspended. Billy had a babyish face, with clear skin that his sister envied, and wide, lazy eyes. His looks held together in a way that Tamsin felt her own pointy countenance did not, and she was certain that in a few years he would have girls falling at his feet. Nothing would have induced her to tell him that.

She looked questioningly at Izzy.

‘Sure,’ said Isabelle. ‘The others’ll be there and I think Jackie’s going to come along with Suzii.’

‘Urgh,’ said Billy, smiling at Izzy. ‘That Jackie is a pest.’

‘Really? I’d have thought you’d have liked her. She’s very pretty.’

‘Nah. Not my type.’ His gaze did not deviate from the object of his adoration. In fact, the sole thing he and Jackie had in common was their shared love of Isabelle.

‘Jesus, Billy,’ said Tamsin, disgusted. ‘You’re like a lovesick puppy. Leave Izzy alone. You’re embarrassing her.’

They found Amanda and Suzii occupying a booth, which was modelled on some sort of old-fashioned train compartment. It was a prized place to sit. Both of them were drinking Southern Comfort and lemonade. Although it was a Thursday, the pub was packed with their contemporaries, with people they had known for years and years. Tamsin was finding it easier to chat to normal people these days, and she was happy to be friendly to people who had previously given her the wide berth that was merited by someone who wore a green felt hat to school.

She and Izzy squeezed in. Tamsin turned to Billy.

‘Go on then,’ she ordered. ‘Buy us a drink. Let’s see you getting served.’

Billy rose to the challenge, taking his ID reverently from his pocket, straightening it out, and clasping it between finger and thumb as he elbowed his way to the bar. It was a bad double photocopy of his birth certificate, with the date of birth ineptly Tippexed out and inked in with a biro. Since he went to the local comprehensive, Billy was on easy terms with everybody in the room, and Tamsin envied him that as well. She watched him smiling, waving, slapping shoulders as he worked his way through the room. Then his back was absorbed into the throng, clad in a shabby, baggy charcoal jumper. Twenty minutes later he reappeared, and triumphantly placed five glasses on the table.

‘Southern Comfort and lemonade all round!’ he announced.

‘They served you?’

‘Looks like. Budge up.’

‘Did they look at your ID?’

‘Nope. Not even.’

Tamsin shook her head. ‘This place is long overdue a raid.’

‘You do realise,’ said Amanda, ‘that we won’t be able to come here any more when we’re eighteen. It’ll be too annoying for us, seeing everyone else drinking underage.’

‘I know,’ Suzii agreed. ‘We won’t even need ID any more.’

‘We might,’ Izzy pointed out, ‘but we can use real ID. Too easy.’

They all nodded, frustrated at the distance that still lay between themselves and real adulthood. Tamsin imagined going out for what her parents liked to call ‘a civilised drink’, by which they meant a nice pub or bar, somewhere that was not crammed with vomiting teenagers. She pictured herself at university, perhaps in Cambridge, sitting in a beautiful old pub filled with dark wood and leaflets for Bach recitals, sipping a glass of cold white wine. Izzy could be with her.

She glanced at Amanda, who was currently throwing herself wholeheartedly into a Sloaney aesthetic. Amanda was wearing a navy blue rugby shirt with its collar turned up around a string of fake pearls, and a pair of tight cords, and she had already gulped down her Southern Comfort. She wore frosted pink lipstick and pale blue eyeshadow, and Tamsin was unable, for now, to place her in the Cambridge pub. The same applied to Suzii, who was laughing raucously with a tall, spotty boy who was standing next to their table. He was looking down at Suzii, whose hair was shorter and spikier than ever, with a glint in his eye. Suzii did that to men. They took one look at her, and decided that she was sure to be up for it.

'Amanda,’ Tamsin said, suddenly wondering why they hadn’t been having this conversation incessantly.

‘Mmm?’

‘Where do you want to go to uni?’ None of them had really bothered deciding yet, although many other girls in their year were frantically obsessing over courses.

‘Oh, shit, I don’t know,’ Amanda said, leaning across the table and shouting over the din of U2. ‘Bristol, maybe? Exeter? Durham? Not really thought about it. Might do history. You? After today’s little fight you must be doing politics, yeah?’

‘Maybe English. Not sure. But I was thinking of applying for Cambridge.’

Amanda laughed. ‘Yeah? That would be cool. We could all come and visit you, go punting and shit. English at Cambridge. Very un-Tamsin.’

Izzy butted in. ‘I’m going to apply to music colleges as well as for English. See if anybody wants me for either. But I think it’s more interesting to think about what we’d like to do afterwards. I mean, where do we see ourselves in, say, ten years’ time?’ They all laughed at the very idea of being twenty-seven. ‘OK,’ Izzy continued, still obliged to shout. ‘I’ll start. I’d like to be married to someone wonderful. With a job in an orchestra or maybe working for a publisher. Have my first child on the way, a girl who I will call Poppy. Living in a big house in London, but going to the seaside for weekends. We’ll have a gorgeous little cottage right on the beach, somewhere like Suffolk.’ She smiled. ‘Amanda?’

‘Oh, shit. Me. Um, married too, and not having to worry about cash. I’d like to work in PR, running my own incredibly successful company. My husband would need to be filthy rich, too, probably one of those city guys. So we’d be in London as well as we’d have dinner parties with Izzy and her man. Holiday home in the Caribbean, and a cleaner, and designer clothes made specially for me by the designers who are so grateful for the amazing PR I do for them. Child some time after I’m thirty, but only one because I wouldn’t want it to get in the way of my career or my flat stomach.’ She smiled, pleased with her vision. ‘That’s me. Suzii?’

Suzii was still trading banter with the young man, so Tamsin stepped in instead.

‘I want to do something that matters,’ she said, suddenly fired up. ‘I want to make a difference to someone. In ten years, I’d like to be living in South Africa, running an orphanage or something. Working with children in the townships. I could have a boyfriend, but I’ll be married to my work, and my children will be the kids I look after, because there’ll be no point me bringing another child into the world when there are so many who have nothing. I’ll live on a pittance but it won’t matter because I’ll still be rich compared to everyone else.’

‘Oh, Tamsin!’ Amanda complained. ‘Now you’ve made me and Izzy look really grasping and uncaring.’ She tugged Suzii’s arm, and forced her into the conversation. ‘Suzii! You’ve got to tell us where you see yourself in ten years’ time! Come on.’

Suzii looked at their faces, blankly. ‘Ten years? Blimey. Umm, still here, I suppose. Been to uni, come back to Cardiff, hanging out with you guys. I’d like to be an artist, maybe work with Chapter. Be free. Go out to dinner. Maybe have a boyfriend but I don’t want to get married till I’m about thirty.’ She glanced up at the boy and gave him a look that promised everything. ‘Until then I’m young, free and single.’ He smiled down at her.

Tamsin leaned forward. ‘Why don’t we make a plan?’ she suggested. ‘Why don’t we meet up when we’re grown up? We can fix it now. And we have to stick to it. We have to meet up when we’re really old, like more than thirty. See what’s happened to us all. What do you think?’

I wanted them to see me before I saw them. I held myself rigid, and looked away from the people who were milling around the baggage reclaim. I was swirling with adrenaline, and was fighting the urge to turn and flee. There was a map on the upper level of the airport, a Ryanair map of their destinations. I stared at it, hating myself, until I heard my name.

She said it again, closer. I looked around, and there was Amanda.

‘Susie!’ Amanda said, a third time. Her voice was warm, pleased.

‘Amanda!’ I exclaimed. Amanda was twice the size she had been at school. ‘Oh, my goodness, sorry, I was miles away. Hey, you look fabulous. Come here!’