Her lips tingled as though Neill’s were still upon them. Devouring a cookie as she leaned back onto his shoulder, she was a world away from being that fifteen-year-old beleaguered schoolgirl at Thornwood. She could be five years older, there with Richard Neill the Londoner; two anonymous figures huddled under the huge soldier that shielded and protected them there, sitting on the grass whilst the grass inside her pulled her a throng higher at a time like an ascending harmony of harp strings.
‘This cookie tastes ten times nicer than normal,’ she giggled, suddenly thinking her face might look like her idiot stoned mum slurping the tin of Fruit Cocktail, so she added with in a cerebral air:
‘It’s like this sugar is a liquid elixir for the vast desert landscape of my mouth.’
‘Well, our desert-mouths are almost out of desserts, and aptly, water, too,’ as he swigged the last slosh from the bottle. ‘We’ll have to grab some more. Let’s go before my wallet’s run dry by a traffic warden.’
He pulled his arm from around her and they heaved to standing, gathering up their bags.
‘Used to see a woman from the MacLaren car dealer down that way,’ he nodded as they walked to the car. ‘Couldn’t quite afford one but pretended to, so I could ogle cars whilst ogling her.’
‘Why am I not surprised,’ she laughed. ‘Did you lie about your income for a test drive?’
‘Oh, of her cars, too. She could have been my meal ticket but thankfully no ticket here,’ as they climbed into his Mercedes. ‘Good, considering we were both just absent from reality.’
‘I’d say more engaged with it. Are you going to be ok driving?’
‘I’ll drive just fine if not better, on that argument.’
‘You’ll actually drive calmly?’
‘Average speed of London traffic is 20mph as it’s been for the last hundred years, so I wouldn’t worry.’
They motored on till the sprawling grounds of Buckingham Palace loomed into view, its wrought iron gates decked with the golden coat of arms, a few tourists dotted around pointing cameras and sitting amongst the various statues opposite.
‘Her Majesty’s abode! Nicer in the summer really,’ said Neill as they gazed at the wieldy palace backed by the grey January sky.
‘Have you ever been inside it?’
‘No, but I’ve had the Queen give it to me in her gardens. My sculptor friend had a piece shown there once.’
‘You met the Queen?’
‘Yep, the queer little lizard herself shook my hand. We’ll go on this way through Westminster so we see more landmarks…’
He circled the car round and out, and on they drove to Westminster Abbey, as the infamous clock face of Big Ben came into view.
‘Downing Street that way. Trafalgar Street further up, for the National Portrait Gallery - another one for my art student. Crossing the river now, back to the South Bank where we were last night.’
They went on crawl-driving through junctions as Natalia stared up at buildings and London pedestrians streamed around their car from every angle, along with whizzing bikes and cyclists, and even tuk-tuks trundling past.
‘You’re not saying much my darling. Are you liking Richie’s London by Car?’
‘Oh I’m just taking it all in. It’s like a freight train odyssey of landmarks really.’
‘That’s why I love London. The epicentre of everything. Which of course can be a bit much too. Well, we’re almost at Southwark. Are you hungry?
‘Surprisingly yes, even after that big breakfast.’
‘Well you’ll have all the cuisine in the world to pick from. The Shard’s just over that way—’
‘Oh, the funny shaped building.’
After driving down three side roads without a parking space in sight, frustrated Neill eventually found a car park and handed over a £10 note to a man at a kiosk.
‘Here we are!’ as they parked up and walked on. ‘Let’s go eat everything we can. Oh, but first…’
He ushered her to a kerbside stall with a large rail of accessories.
‘We were in such a rush in Harrods, we forgot to buy you a new bag. Probably for the best as it will save me a few bob buying it from here…’
‘Oh! So cheap I can get one for school and one for… field trips?’
‘We’ll use it to load up our market wares.’
‘How are you so loaded on Thornwood pay then?’ as she watched him flash out crisp notes as habitually as his fag packet.
‘Ha. Not as much as I’d like to be. Though I did wangle more at Thornwood than any Head’s ever had.’
‘Oh, good,’ she laughed, as he took her hand to advance them down the cobbled road and through a tunnel where rail tracks screeched overhead into London Bridge.
Planes droned through the sky along to a distant wail of police sirens - as seemed to be heard constantly in London - with every smell from fragrant colognes to repugnant drains and diesel, and now a flux of hot food wafts, building an unsettling sensory buzz in Natalia that at once made her tense and yet feel curiously alive.
‘Borough Market’s just round here,’ Neill pointed to his handheld pet as they came toward an open-sided building. ‘Really we should be having a roast on a Sunday, but this is a better adventure for your birthday!’
A bustle of noise burst into their ears as they turned the corner and Natalia gasped in astonishment at a wonderland of wares spread before her. Sizzling Lebanese falafel served into wraps with tabbouleh and hummus; a charred suckling pig speared from top to tail - ‘well there’s your Sunday spitroast, girl!’ - huge vats of wild mushroom risotto and Indian curries simmering in a row of cauldrons. Every few yards would be a new cloud of aroma, from a pungent fish stall to vast stinky Swiss cheeses; warm roasting coffee beans followed by scents of Caribbean jerk chicken, Aberdeen Angus burgers and Greek souvlaki.
Every shape and colour of vegetable, every size and shade of bread loaf; saucisson, spices, shelves of teas and a new vocabulary of culinary words chalked on boards and shouted from lively voices as Natalia drunk it all in from the side of her nonchalant bodyguard of a Headmaster who anchored her arm as all colours and creeds of people bumped against her other.
‘Like seafood?’ he asked, as Natalia grimaced at a cup of clams and mussels, followed by oysters presented with their shells. ‘Try one with lemon?’ as she took and swallowed it like he did. ‘Not bad but I draw the line at those edible insects!’ she pointed, laughing, then watched in awe as Neill gabbled in fluent French to a charcutier.
The next ninety minutes was spent having sample after sample of food and trying to decide what they would buy a bigger plate of. ‘Shawarma or tapas for you, Natalia? …Ah, ale selection,’ perused Neill. ‘Shame I’m driving. But I’ll take some home.’ They stopped at ‘the freshest strawberries you’ll ever taste!’ dipped in chocolate, followed by apple crumble with shortbread and rose petals, before stumbling full-bellied for ‘something a little more exotic, a cardamon tea from this Indian stall.’ Natalia, who’d never had any other variation on black tea than standard builder’s, watched as leaves were brewed with spices and honey, squeezing onto a packed bench almost at Neill’s lap again to taste the outcome.
‘This is actually lovely,’ she beamed.
‘You can take some chai home. Over there is a shit-tonne of teas, let’s buy a selection. Earl Grey with lavender, now that looks tempting…’
‘If you’re intent on opening up my narrow Northern mind with your patronising Southern diversity, go ahead.’
‘Got to take a dessert back too,’ as he spied an artisan meringue stall. ‘Has your high worn off yet?’
‘Just about. My thoughts aren’t echoing in my head anymore.’
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*
Soon they were perched by Southwark Church, bags of purchases by their ankles, Neill’s back against brick and Natalia’s against his shoulder, both eating an ice cream.
‘God I remember one school trip to St Paul’s Cathedral when I was a boy. We were heading up some stairs and my mates all hid to get back on me for a trick I’d played earlier. When they jumped out at me I fouled myself. Never gone back there since.’
‘Oh my god,’ as she licked. ‘That was knocked off your Tour of London then.’
‘If we had time I’d take you down to Brighton for an ice cream by the sea, my fair mermaiden.’
‘What, when you’ve just treated me to all this? Total grooming by the way.’
‘Not with this bird’s nest hair,’ he murmured, his arm coming around her fur-coated waist as he continued to demolish his ice cream in the other. ‘I thought you were Veruca Salt now anyway.’
‘Veruc-Assault.’
A cold mouth came down at her ear. ‘Haven’t you enjoyed being my victim?’
‘Accomplice,’ she laughed. ‘Think I might need a hideout for this coat,’ she craned her head round to him. ‘I mean, what will my mum say when she sees it?’
‘Tell her she’s drunk, she’s seeing things,’ he muttered into her hair - Natalia laughing and squirming back into his cheek - ‘Besides, she’s called Mary isn’t she, won’t she be pleased to have her little lamb? Such a messy one too, you already have ice cream on it…’ Neill’s hand came to her wrist where her fur sleeve had caught a kitten-lick of white, as he mock-jolted her, giggling against him. ’Keep still you.’
Composed again, they leisurely licked their cones watching the passers-by.
‘So how does it feel to be 16? God, I wish I was 16 again…’
‘What, still trapped at school, about to start the next two years of compulsory education?’
‘You’ll love college.’
‘I’ll still be stuck with miserable mum.’
‘Can’t you go and live in a student commune or something?’
‘I don’t think you can when you’re 16. Not until university, isn’t it.’
‘Come camp in my shed. You can keep that as messy as Branwell and Kabakov combined. Know anything about gardening?’
‘Nope.’
‘Perfect, that’s more than most.’
They crunched the last of their cones.
‘Are we going soon? Back home?’ she asked.
‘Yes, we should head off before 3 o’clock.’ He patted her arm to jump up. As she arose, she pulled at her knickers that were stuck to her bottom.
‘So ladylike.’
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Back at the car, comically dispatched from his hand with a shove into the front seat, she collapsed back yawning.
‘So exhausting dealing with your retail addiction.’
‘The weed will be partly to thank,’ as he started up the engine. ‘Lucky you, that you can’t drive and thus will be chauffeured all the way.’
‘Back to my sorry life?’
‘It’s not as sorry now though, is it?’
‘Sorrier, compared to this.’
‘Damn and blast, girl! You mean that smile on your face is all in vain?’
She laughed. ‘The smile is sticking. I promise.’
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*
They crawled Northbound through London to Neill’s driving commentary. ‘Camden Town,’ he nodded, ‘another famous market there’ - and then faster through Edgware and Elstree, till the signs for the M25 appeared finally - just as Natalia felt they’d been driving for a century, but a century well spent, to be slouched here next to Neill even if his narration was turning her into Sleeping Beauty now, upon the heated seat he’d cranked to the max for her. She found herself dipping out on some sweet cloud of weed-weary, mouth-hanging-open delirium, and only woke with a jolt as the car lurched violently from right to left, hearing:
‘Absolute fucktard!’
She opened her eyes to find it was dark, with an apologetic side-glance from Neill.
‘Sorry to disturb your fly-catching, little froggie. Blame Mr Mitsubishi taking the sliproad over there. Jesus! I’ve never seen such a deathwish manoeuvre.’
‘Where are we?’
‘Twenty minutes into the M1.’
She yawned repeatedly and reached for water and a box of gourmet macaroons.
‘Stop, thief! Those were mine!’
‘Sharer, Sarah? I’ll have the two pink raspberry ones. You can have the salted caramel and ponce pistachio ones.’
‘So polite too. Goodness. But no ruder than you’ve been on this trip.’
‘How do you mean? I’ve been super dooper polite.’
‘Hmm.’
He turned on the music. Through the duration of David Bowie’s Let’s Dance, they finished the whole box of macaroons.
‘Goodness. It won’t be Sweet Shop Stomach but Borough Bowels. Still, a sugar rush will keep me awake.’
‘Until the crash.’
On came the riveting synth-notes of Relax by Frankie Goes To Hollywood. They sat listening for a while, till Neill glanced to her.
‘Do you know what this song’s about, Natalia?’
She frowned. ‘I’ve heard it before, it’s off the Virgin advert, isn’t it? I hadn’t really thought about the lyrics…’
‘Oh?’ His eyebrow raised.
‘And if you’re asking me, with that look on your face too, then it’s got to be rude.’
‘Pardon?’
‘Banging on about relaxing, like you do - is it about weed? Oh wait, no. Singing about when you come. So, I don’t know… he’s giving time for the woman to have an orgasm?’
‘That’s… an interesting reading,’ he smiled.
As Holly Johnson continued singing about shooting, and intentions, Natalia mused:
‘Hmm. Male orgasm then.’
‘And what makes you think that?’
‘Well, the lyrics. Shooting, up…’
‘Shootin’ uhp…what?’
‘Well, fucking laser beams or whatever he’s on about!’ she laughed.
‘Well you’re right, that could be male or female, couldn’t it?’
‘I dunno.’
‘Would you describe yours as laser beams?’
‘No, well I don’t… you know…’
‘You don’t what, wank?’
‘No!’ she scorned.
‘Really? So what did I hear last night?’ he side-glanced.
Natalia’s heart thudded like a stone as her blood flashed cold.
‘What.’
‘Well either your room was endowed with some bonus exercise equipment, or your biscuits in the tea caddy tasted a darn sight better than mine—’
‘Wha—’
‘Or maybe you were just thinking what a lovely day you’d had, and you wanted to turn 16 upon the stroke of twelve, but talk about a Virgin advert!’
‘Are you ser—’ She stopped as her face started to burn red, just as the song reached a deep proclamation of what sounded like orgasm - followed by a long, snarling grunt - as Natalia stared ahead, praying a hole would open up in the car floor and drop her body gashed and splintering out onto the road.
She began: ‘I, I…’
As the song flowered into whoops of jazzy triumph, Neill turned in smug girlish imitation:
‘I, I… am a liar? I know you wank. Besides, knickers that end up tossed up like that on the duvet tell a story in themselves!’
The singer was now cawing helplessly ‘I’m coming! I’m coming!’ as Natalia sat red as a beetroot, shaking her head indignantly - now thinking that Neill might have seen the globulous stains in her knickers too - but how the heck could she ask to ascertain that! She tossed and turned her face from window to dashboard, making the same sound as someone’s bowels opening on the toilet.
‘God, you are so…’
‘What? Perceptive? Able of hearing? Next door?’
‘…Much of a wanker!’
‘Takes one to know one.’
She rolled her eyes. ‘Yeah, yeah, wrong word, well done Mr Smut, you can smirk some more!’
‘Ha! Come on, I’m sharer Sarah,’ he reached to tousle her hair. ‘You know I like winding you up. Seeing you get all hot-faced and agitated…’
She leaned her head away.
‘More than last night?’ he added.
‘Shut up,’ she stared to avert a growing grin.
‘Ah, she’s smiling!’
She cleared her throat. ‘Not as much as I was last night.’
‘Haaaaa—! Now the truth’s—’
‘Well if you can’t wank on the first decent bed in your life, in the first fucking decent place you’ve ever stayed in, then when the fuck can you!’
He chortled. ‘That is my girl!’
The song erupted with the singer’s timely ‘Hurrgh-arrrgh!’
Neill put out his palm.
‘Fuck off,’ she smirked and batted it away.
‘Why, haven’t you washed it yet?’
She paused. ‘No, you haven’t washed yours.’
He guffawed. ‘I don’t use that hand!’
‘You’ll need to when I break your other one in the car door.’
He laughed even more, as she did too, as the song climaxed into gusts and moans, and as it finally ended, Natalia glanced to the music screen, and found that in the space of 3 minutes and 56 seconds, her embarrassment had been dissipated from self-death-wishing, to laughing at something she would never tell anyone, for she would never, ever want a single soul to know she plays with herself, and here she was humouring her own embarrassing fanny with the hot Headmaster himself?
Gnawing her lip as another song burst on, Shattered by the Rolling Stones, Neill mouthed along to Mick Jagger shouting about sex and dirty dreams.
‘Ahh, another song for you!’
‘Shut up wanker.’
‘Ok wanker.’
She stared back out of the window as the song’s jagged, rebellious tones seemed to celebrate them both shattered and bickering home, and Natalia’s sudden admittance onto a somewhat adult boat of conversation that whole weekend. Whilst Jagger snarled about love, hope and ‘sex, and sex, and sex, and sex!’ she felt awash with an ocean, of the smells of Neill and London, all the sexual talk, the pretence of being his girlfriend and being kissed and held and pretend-loved, being casually referred to as ‘stunning’ in front of his friends; all made her body sink and float at once; the songbeats like shards of sex… a London Shard pricking into her urethra, her vagina… spiky, poking, jabbing; what she felt was an intimidating mysterious world of penetration and expectations and her private fluffy wank-world being crudely bust open by the man who ruled her school, and beckoned a world of things she wasn’t ready for; she was all at sea, her knickers engulfed with the waves of a tidal storm.
‘So that’s why you said I was rude,’ she muttered. ‘Oh and falling asleep thinking of Ryan for hours. So you’ve been grinning about it all day have you, till now you bring it up?’
‘Thought I’d keep fingers on lips about it,’ he chuckled.
She groaned.
‘Till you had the audacity to deny it like some little puritan. Doesn’t everyone start wanking at ten years old or something?’
‘Ten minutes old in your case. I should have just brought a bloody book to read in this car instead of talking to you.’
‘Ohh, so you could lick and finger book pages in bed instead?’
‘Fuck off.’
He laughed. ‘So what did you make of the books I gave you? Have you started any?’
‘Hmm. Kind of started three at once.’
‘Which?’
‘Roxana, Moll Flanders…’
‘And Memoirs of A Woman of Pleasure?’
‘No. Dickens.’
‘Same thing.’
‘You’re the obscene one, putting that in,’ she glanced to him.
‘That’s literally all the women say in that book. ‘O, he murther’d my maidenhead with his mischievous spit-fire machine!’’
‘Really,’ she coughed.
‘Wasn’t it the first book you opened of the lot?’
‘No! Well, do you read erotic novels? Or is that just a one-off you perved on and purged onto me?’
‘Cliterature is more a female thing,’ he mused. ‘I’ve had a mosey-nosey but men prefer visual.’
‘But you can quote that book?’
‘Just as well as you probably can from the passages you’ve looked at, yes.’
She tutted.
‘Listen. I know how females like saucy books, so purging my shelves is a win-win. I literally have hundreds at home and can only fit so many of them in there.’
‘Books or females?’
‘I don’t have women in my house, as you know. It’s a Brontë bachelor pad. Not even you would be allowed in.’
‘I’d get in. Letterbox sized for a fairy isn’t it?’
‘No comment.’
She stared. ‘You are fucking lewd filth. You definitely should have taken Joan on this trip instead.’
‘I was actually invited out with Joan this weekend. But you came first…’
She groaned, as he laughed.
‘Well, that’s funny,’ she flashed her eyes at him, ‘because Ryan asked me out too.’
‘And you preferred minding the gap down south instead?’
She sighed. ‘Is that another…’
‘So Ryan actually asked you out?’
‘Yeah, to the cinema—’
‘Aww! You could have gone for a chick flick after all! Although in the end, you did!’
‘Shut up! Are you always going to make fun of me for…?’
‘Of course.’
She blew out her cheeks. ‘Does your real girlfriend put up with this from you?’
‘No, she puts me up her for real.’
She turned to him. ‘So you’ve had sex with Joan already?’’
‘Of course, what do you take me for?’
‘Well, I hadn’t heard your repertoire of sleazy stories about it, for one!’
‘Oh don’t worry darling, you will,’ he side-glanced. ‘I wouldn’t want to perturb my young pretend GF on her birthday weekend, how indelicate would that be?’
‘Indelicate! Says the man who takes a pretend girlfriend to London instead of his real one!’
‘I wouldn’t call Joan my girlfriend though. I’m not sure she’s quite achieved that status.’
‘Wouldn’t you want to help her build that status in a Bentley suite?’ Natalia scoffed. ‘Room to swing your big hairy aching balls?’
‘Ha! Even if Joan becomes my girlfriend, I’m not sure I’d want to rush her down to London. Why would I drag the lady all the way down South when she belongs up North? It would be like putting my office furniture in the boot of my car just to show my friends the surface of the desk I work on.’
‘Surface of your desk?’
‘The analogy works. Solid, installed, and sitting pretty whilst I bang her drawers. She’s an important bigwig on the education scene, she’s busy on conference thingies all the time. Meanwhile,’ he shot his hand onto Natalia’s, with a little squeeze, as her face turned sceptical: ‘I help out the local little Oliver Twist girl on her first skip down the streets of London to have some food glorious food, and learn to artfully steal Londoners’ hearts with her impoverished but insightful, intuitive innocence…’
‘Oliver Twist…. oh, great,’ as she pulled her hand away.
‘Charlie Bucket, then, who—’
‘Goes on a day out with his grandad.’
‘I’m only old enough to be your father…’
‘And watches one girl eat and talk till she’s blue in the face—’
‘Claire as Violet Beauregard?’ he laughed.
‘With you driving this car as hair-raisingly as Wonka’s boat…’
‘Ha, no…’ as he raised a finger to her - ‘you sampling the same wares that your wonkier, although not wankier peers consume’ - he grinned, as she whacked her fingers against his wrist - ‘but unlike your class of delinquents, you end up ethereally flying like it’s fizzy lifting liquid—’
‘Nearly ends up slashed, then walks out rejecting Willy?’
‘Till she sees sense and takes the everlasting gobstopper, and all she can say is oompa loompa, you little joke hijacker,’ as his hand came to her head to tousle her hair and she batted him away playfully, descending into a fit of laughter as his hand repeatedly grabbed at hers, their fingers entwining for a moment then dropping.
‘What’s the other one I compared you to, the bookworm… oh, Matilda.’
‘No, I did that first. When I mentioned being thrown out of the school by my pigtails.’
‘And was this trip a better way to get out than that? Besides that wasn’t Matilda. It was the other girl—’
‘Amanda Thripp. Except you’re no Trunchbull.’
‘But you’re Honey.’
‘Well, you’re kind of Trunchbull and Miss Honey in one. Reckon you need a chokey for most of the boys in Year 11.’
‘That’s the sick room anyway isn’t it?’
‘A few screws and it would be.’
‘What kind of a sick room are you thinking of, young lady?’
‘Just the level of sick your friends joked about. Screwing up my drawing, they said, and then going back to yours…’
‘‘Tilda want to go back to Honey-Truncheon’s to see the size of teacher’s Head?’
She laughed, blushing. ‘And show you her supernatural powers?’
‘Both super and natural. She’d make something levitate alright…’
‘I don’t know if she’d want something scaly and reptilian in her waters.’
‘Nah. Matilda knows how much she likes a good book. She also knows how the older ones are better.’
‘Matilda doesn’t give one,’ she sighed, and shook her head. ‘You’re so rude. Are you really going back to being a sensible Headmaster tomorrow?’
‘Nope. I’m going back to being the same as I always was. Right—’ as his headlight shone on a sign for Newport Pagnell Services, ‘we need to stop for a fag and a fill-up. And the Borough Bowels are opening.’
‘So it really is a shit stop. Unless you mean…’
‘No time for that, you little wanker. But after shit shall we sit? On a nice discreet bench outside, where I’ll keep you warm, won’t kiss you too much, and I can smoke and be a happy boy, whilst you draw cocks, clits and the whole cunty kit caboodle on the Daily Mail. Want anything from Starbucks?’
‘I’m a bit tea’d out.’
‘I’ll get you a decaf.’
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*
Huddling onto a bench under a crescent moon with two takeaway lattes, Neill exclaimed at his cigarette packet to find half of them turned upside down, and the flaps of the inner foil ripped like a Hawaiian skirt.
‘Natalia! You rascal! Have you been playing with my fags as well as yourself?’
She laughed. ‘Could have been another schoolgirlfriend…’
‘Oh because I have lots, that’s right.’
‘Who’s the next one that gets taken on a road trip?’
‘Oh let’s see,’ his fag end glowing in the dark as he took a contemplatory drag. ‘It’s your mate Laura next weekend, who I’m driving straight to the human waste disposal point. And who’s the other bird, Samantha is it? The jittery blonde who gnaws on her jumper sleeves and drones the word ‘amazing’ like she’s repeatedly having the most boring orgasm ever somewhere behind her forehead…?’
Natalia was in a volley of giggles.
‘…Which means I’ll indeed drive her to London, straight to the hotel room you stayed in’ - as his arm came around her shoulder and down like a seatbelt from behind, scooping her into him, ‘so she can learn from whatever possessed you and rise her to a similar ilk, if not in this lifetime nor the next, then somewhere in her sorry soul’s trajectory. Does that, you giggling minx,’ as he began to burrow his lips into her hair, ‘answer your absurd question?’
‘Mm-hm…’ she toned back dreamily, pinching the fag from his fingers for a little puff, returning it to him as he took back his arm and they both sat upright again.
‘But come on,’ she turned to him, ‘Alana is stunning, you have to admit?’
‘Yeah she’s attractive,’ he sniffed, blasé. ‘Good features. Could be a model, all that jazz. Looked like something off a catwalk walking up to me in the Grotto in those jeans, but laughed a bit too much at my shite cracker jokes to the point she looked epileptic. If she was up for it I could lose my job for a squirt up her supermodel jacksy to hear her fake-orgasm, or shoot it into her horsey gob and then what? Watch her shriek she’s swallowed something 100% unvegan?’
Natalia burst out laughing. ‘Oh my god! You are so bad and I love it!’
He dragged, chuckling softly and squinting at her. She cradled her head upon her hands, in a sheepish gaze on him.
‘I meant what I said on the Haworth coach… where the fuck did you come from.’
‘And clearly with this trip I’ve shown you, that I meant what I said that I’ll show you.’
She giggled. ‘But we should be glad that school kids my age don’t have to write about ‘what we did at the weekend’ anymore!’
‘Oh you’d be brilliant at it, just like when you went ad-lib-lie in the art college story. Except that wasn’t so much a lie.’
‘Huh? The whole thing was made up.’
‘Red dress, that’s real,’ he gestured with his fag, ‘you drawing cock, that’s real. And when I approach you with silly jokes, you often tell me to fuck off, quite rightly.’ He paused.
‘And then… screwing you all the way home?’
‘Well, it was a comically hyperbolic ending of course. You’re screwing with me all the way home.’
‘But you were on about me being so drop dead gorgeous or whatever you said, a complete exaggeration— ’
‘Ohh,’ he whined pityingly, ‘was it? Don’t tell me you’re one of those sorry and disillusioned, body-dysmorphic girls who have a circus mirror or something at home.’
‘Huh? Er, no…’
‘Do me a favour Natalia and extinguish all nonsense from your head that’s of the contrary. You ought to know that your intellect, wit and looks make you clearly the most desirable woman-in-the-making in the whole school.’
‘Oh god,’ her face fell sideways onto her arm, ‘I go from being made fun of at school, to… you, saying that.’
‘Made fun of about what?’
‘My body, my… everything.’
‘Oh, I see. Jealousy. Who says things?’
‘Boys in the class—’
‘Boys? Insulting ladies? Oh right, trying to win favour—’
‘No, not like that. They don’t fancy me, they’re just… twats.’
‘Well, you said it. And the girls?’
‘Stacey and Marcia did…’
‘Well Marcia’s long gone, and to find an insult for Stacey would be so easy that I would actually feel unkind, which is a huge rarity for me, and testament to just how abysmal that girl is in every respect possible,’ he inhaled sharply. ‘You’re worrying about flies when you’re assigned to be a Queen bee. It’s no accident I call you honey, Miss Honey, because you’re the only flower in the school, the stuff of pure blossom nectar, and flies know shit - so to speak - about Honey, who shouldn’t and doesn’t give one.’
She softly stared at him, all a-flutter.
‘Why are you looking at me so quizzically,’ as he stubbed out his fag. ‘Don’t you believe me? After all of this weekend, hm?’
‘No, no, I just…’
She felt like the fizzy lifting liquid was pouring up her spine again as she spied his hand moving toward her, and the warmth of his palm was now scooping into one side of her neck, his fingertips at her nape, as she blinks into his face, which he pulls into him - her forehead landing at his mouth - where she feels a wholesome, prickly, man-fragrant kiss at her hairline, and then another on the naked skin of her forehead, and then his rough cheek is brushing against her eye as he plants one on her temple; and then his nose is at her temple as his smokey lips lower to her cheek - and she is melting more with every second knowing he’s descending to her mouth…
‘Oh, fuck—’
‘I wish.’
Something sparks like a match in her belly just as his mouth arrives at her top lip, parting to receive it - slower than the last times, so slow she could feel a peeling chapped bit of his lip skin brushing on hers - as she pushes both her lips in return, modestly, and she feels a little murmur of surprise in him. His hand tugs her neck closer for his tongue to sidle in, seeking hers; and an ensuing tango of mushy moistness sends her inner organs back into the mincer; her eyelids signal to shutter closed, and just as something deep inside her is firing up like a London ambulance siren, he withdraws with a sharp breath as his eyes dart over to car doors slamming close by, and the cold air is back on her smirking lips, to hear him remark:
‘God. That was supposed to be a little closing peck goodbye.’
Her face is a silent suspended giggle, as he lingers a radiant Cheshire Cat gaze back, both sighing wordlessly as they arise back to the car.
‘Do you want another joint before home?’ he spoke as they got in.
‘I’m ok thanks. I think it would make me smash through the sunroof of this car like Willy Wonka’s Wankav… I mean, Wonkavator!’
‘Wankavator. Ha! You got it right first time.’
‘Shut up.’
‘Take one for home then,’ he nodded down at the glovebox.
‘To smoke what, alone?’
‘Yes, before or after.’
‘You are… very funny, as always.’
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She gazed out of the window for a while, digesting the indigestibly rich food of his kiss, his flattery, his jibing; falling like a shelf of ice under a burning fire right into her heart, as it beat itself into a Neill-sugar-crash till she reclined, head heavy, lulled back to sleep by the darkness of their travelling womb as it hummed on home.
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*
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She woke to a shrill ringing. Her eyes made out ‘JR’ flashing on Neill’s phone as his hand shot to silence it.
‘Not right now. …Hey! One last leak stop at Woolly Edge then we’re home sweet home.’
‘Will it be safe for us to walk in together?’ she yawned as they pulled in. ‘Being so close to Leeds now?’
‘Yes, yes. Run along, we’ll be quick.’
They both headed in, Natalia jogging off to the ladies’ whilst he pushed into the gents’.
As she blinked in at the bright lights, her eyes widened at the sight of a recognisable face exiting a cubicle.
Miss Patrick, her Art teacher.
The beady eyes behind her round-rimmed spectacles caught Natalia at once. She smiled, and Natalia smiled back.
Then as Miss Patrick turned to the sink, she bolted straight back out.
She headed straight into the men’s toilets, right to the back of Neill at the urinal.
‘Jesus!’
In a frantic half-turn he almost splashed over her. ‘Natalia, what on earth—’
‘Neill…’
They noticed a man a few urinals down, looking alarmed.
‘It’s ok!’ Neill called over. ‘She’s my trans daughter… I mean, son! She, I mean, he - has a knob bigger than mine!’
The man hurriedly left,
‘Neill, listen,’ Natalia tried to avert her eyes from Neill’s crotch, ‘I’ve seen someone… my Art teacher!’
‘Bloody hell! Right on cue for your Art field trip!’
‘Listen, this isn’t funny. Miss Patrick has seen me…’
‘Good job it’s not Miss Bailey or she’d be in here.’
‘Neill, if you go out and she sees you, it will look dodgy that we’re both here!’
‘Right. Er, I’ll just put my knob away first—’
‘Oh, yep.’
He did up his fly and turned.
‘Right. Gone. Now go outside and check the other knob’s gone too.’
‘But what if she stops for something to eat? We could be trapped in here for hours!’
‘Relax, there’s nothing at Woolley Edge unless she wants a four-course meal of Starbucks coffee beans. You slip out, check she’s gone, then text me.’
‘What! Wave her off from the car park, with her wondering who the hell I’m here with?’
‘Natalia, you’re 16 not six! Who cares! It’s none of her business. Grab a broom and pretend you’re on work experience or something—’
‘What if she sees your car!’
‘That dozey mole can’t see anything more than two metres in front of her.’
‘Where did we park?’
‘Two metres in front of the building.’
She stared. ‘Very funny. I’m going out to check she’s gone. Have a shit or a wank while you wait.’
‘Compose your terrified face first, else she will think something’s up. Act normal and loiter by WHSmith’s shitwank novels.’
Pacing out, Natalia peered at the shop and coffee point, then through the exit, trying to remember what car Miss Patrick owned. She finally spotted her, getting into a Volvo with an elderly man, sighing with relief as she waited for their car to go, so she could check they weren’t stopping for fuel.
A text buzzed from Neill:
‘Well? I look more suspicious hanging in the bogs’
- ‘Wait, slow oldie’
‘Pardon?’
She waited till the car disappeared up the slip road.
‘All clear. Meet you at your car.’
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She opened the door as soon as it click-flashed open.
‘Well that was close,’ sighed Neill as he glided them back onto the motorway. ‘Ready for home?’
‘I guess so.’
‘At least one of us is sensible. Sorry for being a facetious knob.’
‘That’s ok, I’m used to it,’ she sighed.
‘Ahh. The thing is, my darling…’ he trailed off and frowned, ‘this trip has been, well, very naughty of me, you know that. And very risky. You’re right that I need to be a bit more serious.’
‘You? Serious?’
They drove on till the the M1 became the M621 and signs appeared for the different parts of Leeds.
‘Come off at the Holbeck exit. Easiest to get back my way.’
‘Right.’
Soon they were waiting at a glaring traffic light in the dark quiet outer roads of the town centre. He rolled down the window, and she shivered as he lit up a fag.
‘‘Home is so sad,’’ he purred. ‘‘It stays as it was left. Shaped to the comfort of the last to go, as if to win them back.’’
He took a drag and glanced to her. ‘Philip Larkin. Miserable bachelor poet.’
She smiled. ‘Does Leeds feel like home to you or not?’
‘Hmm,’ he mused as they advanced through the green light. ‘Well, I meant it when I said I felt at home when I came back and found your book on my doormat. I was a little melancholy over Christmas, then of course I got ill. So when we hatched the plan to go down to London, I thought somehow I’d be able to stomach the M25 if you’re sitting there doing crasswords and flicking off - sorry, wrong term - swatting away my smut with bonny bawdiness of your own.’
‘Oh, ha…’
‘You know I adore you,’ he continued. ‘Problem is, a bit more after this trip…’
‘Ohh—’
‘And, ah,’ he pulled up at another red light, examining the end of his fag and flicking the ash out of the window - ‘it’s rather agonising because you’re so young darling. I do wish you were older.’
‘That’s… that’s ok, I don’t expect…’
‘When you’re really 19… sod it, on your 18th birthday, I’ll take you to London for a week.’
She laughed.
‘But it won’t be two rooms.’
Her eyes fluttered down. ‘Well this weekend has cheered me up a lot. Thanks.’
‘I’m honoured to have given you a birthday to remember.’
She fidgeted for her phone as they came up into her road.
‘Oh, look, Ryan texted me.’
‘Funny, I just had one in from Joan,’ as he stopped the car, turned off the engine and lights. ‘Burning ears? Does that mean cougar Joan has Ryan in her Z3 at the other end of town, back from their own field trip?’
‘Well it’s because you dumped her call, didn’t you.’
‘I can speak to her later. Right, you,’ as he watched her haul on her fur coat and gather up her bags. ‘Got all your stuff? Take that chai tea, that’s yours. And those.’
As she looked up to say goodbye, his fingers found hers in the darkness over the middle well.
‘Let’s see you out to the end of school, yes? Let’s make these last months easy. If you can’t be my real girlfriend then I can still be your daddy. If you need anything at all, come to me, ok?’
‘Ohh-k,’ she said softly.
‘I really don’t like leaving you here,’ he peered through the windows. ‘Are you going to be ok walking up that road in the dark?’
‘I guess it’s for the best. Safety and all.’
‘I’ll stay here and you text me when you get home.’
‘That’s very kind. Ok, see you… sir, Neill, Richie,’ she laughed.
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His car stayed where it was; a smaller and smaller beam of headlights as she reached her house. She got in through the front door with no sign or sound from her mum, went up to her bedroom to text and get his reply, then watch through the window, the distant glint of the chivalrous chauvinist in his London-wagon drive away.
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*
Natalia’s exhaustion was beyond the physical. She had gone to London for a social baptism of sorts, and a large part of her was coming up for air spluttering, her body doused in a whole different world and culture, back in life in lowly Leeds, in ‘the mouth of hell’ after being high in the lips of heaven. And what about the wanking debacle? Pointing out he’d heard her private throes of passion began as the worst moment of her life yet somehow superglued their banter bond for the rest of the journey. The repulsion she’d always had at the mystery of male masturbation was pulled into an equivalent to her own, not so much the no-fly zone when she’d sat upon Neill’s own. Did she feel embarrassed to take her hand down and pleasure herself now after his litany of mockery of it?
Her hand lazily halted at her right hipbone, the same spot that had become favoured by Neill’s hand that weekend. Happy enough to lay on her peasant bed, now 16, with the words ‘it won’t be two rooms!’ warming her from beneath as she imagined her 18th, and fell asleep as though she were still on the Merc’s heated seat.
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Stretching the next morning, her fingers finally dared to inspect the remnants of the weekend’s party, where everything beautiful and bawdy and bashful had stewed a minestrone soup upon the ridge. A lettuce plant rode ragged with the tracks of twenty snails on a rainy morning, each that she could trace to a thought track of Neill’s words, plucked back like a guitar string for her to sing along a sighing moan.
That shatter-Jaggered-shard that still pulsed inside her, drove a visiting fingertip to her own fairy letterbox, both shuddering and marvelling at how this pure blossom nectar spilling from a hive that buzzed now, would one day welcome a spit-fire machine; mischievous, murdering? And now, her fingers working as busily as bees’ knees, at the flower of her paint palette spiked by wickedness like Malibu in Coke, sends an almighty winged creature searing through; angular and metal-clad, the Wankavator itself, soaring to the ceiling of her bedroom.
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