Car games.

Grabbing a lift, hanging out. I knew that I wasn't Jay's girlfriend but that was fine. But he's getting upset and I'm getting confused.

It’s late afternoon and I’m sitting on my mum and dad’s big bed, the quilted bedspread heavy under my thighs. 

I wanted to go to town, so, rather than make the 20 minute mildly uphill walk, I called Jay. He was at Liam’s, hanging out. And, the fizz of power -  Jay was coming to pick me up! The sheer delight in calling him. I just sort of assumed he would come. It was fun, nothing serious. I knew he didn’t see me as a girlfriend, and, you know, that was totally fine.

The pause from my parents as I delighted in him coming “But can’t you just walk?”

But finally - finally - a man was paying attention to me. I was no longer the frumpy, the tedious argumentative one. I was someone who had a man coming, in his car, to pick her up. I didn’t need these school boys. A man with a car and a job was doing as I said. I was delighted.

-

One evening, I’d forgotten that I’d agreed to go to the cinema with my friend Paul. Most of our house parties were at Paul’s, a rare only child with a single mum. They lived deep in the sticks and his brilliant mum would clear off to the pub and leave us till 11, although one time I fancied myself terribly chic because I’d sat on the sink and drunk red wine as we chatted.

I remember her saying that she wasn’t the marrying kind. 

She had a genial relationship with Paul’s dad and I remember feeling that that’s where my future lay. How glamorous she was (is), fiercely single, roaring with laughter and delight at the happy silliness of fifteen years olds dancing the YMCA with no irony and knowing every last word.

-

Jay was over at mine, legs pushing out of the armchair behind the door into the sitting room. The coal fire was probably lit, warming the length of his stretched legs, chunky trainers. I knew that Paul was coming over. I knew he was due and we’d planned to go to the cinema. I didn’t know how to say it. Now I know I’m profoundly socially awkward, that social anxiety can cripple me. But then, I was just 17 and didn’t know how to start saying the words. I sat on the sofa, feeling more and more awkward, talking and just avoiding what I knew I needed to do.

And now Paul comes in and I think I blurted “We’re going to the cinema it’s been planned all week I’m really sorry I know should have said something but I just -”. 

“Oh, okay? It’s like that is it? No, don’t worry…” Pulling his legs up rising from the chair and hands up in surrender “Oh no, don’t - no, no DON’T WORRY ABOUT IT but why the fuck are you going with HIM?”.

Look, of course 20 years on, I cannot remember every last word, but I can see the cool jut of his chin, the smoothness of his forehead, the pinpoints of his pupils. Sitting with my laptop now I feel the fizz of anxiety in my chest as I have to tell him - as I know I will be saying something he does not want to hear. That he will be and indeed he gets angry and Paul doesn’t know what to do with himself because Jay is being rude about him, to him.

Paul and I left for the new multiplex in his Mark one, vintage golf, parked and walked in. Most of my friends were boys then, I found them easier, I think - even if we’d snogged the weekend before, it was quickly just, somehow, never a big deal, just part of the daft hormonal silliness that felt safe. 

Had Paul and I decided to go to film just the two of us? Did it start out as a bigger plan? Should that matter?

I can’t remember what we watched or how I felt in the cocoon of the cinema, but we walked back to Paul’s car, chatting and light. It was fun and, after months of feeling disconnected from my friends, he and I had had fun.

And, we get to Paul’s car, and something looks weird. Off.

We slow down, frown.

Every one of Paul’s tyres had been let down. 

Did I say that Jay was a mechanic? And especially good with Golfs?

-

Jay claimed total ignorance. Said he wouldn’t know Paul’s car, couldn’t know it.

Liam knew.

-

Why didn’t I tell him to fuck off, there and then? Why wasn’t this enough? Jay said he didn’t do it. In my naivety I believed him. I’d never experienced behaviour like this; I think I couldn’t process how someone could be so vindictive and malicious. And I wasn’t his girlfriend, I think? My diaries at that time are looking for signs and just none of it made sense.

I couldn’t believe that someone who held me and kissed me, who wanted to have sex with me, who laughed and called me “sweet pea” would wilfully put me and my friend in danger.

So? I didn’t. I just filed it under “coincidences” and made myself try to forget. He said he didn’t, so, he didn’t. It didn’t make sense so it couldn’t have happened.

I trusted him.

_

Cover image Photo by Martin Katler on Unsplash