Pillow Talk Part 21

'OK to chips next time.'

'Oh. Good.'

'Do you want a coffee you know, a quick coffee, before you go?'

'Oh I've asked for the bill.'

'I know. I mean at mine.'

They looked at each other. Petra willing herself to give no glint to her eye; Arlo scouring her face for a glimpse of such a glint.

'Or tea,' she said.

'Coffee would be great,' said Arlo.

Again, Petra chose the more circuitous way back to the Old Stables for all the same reasons that she'd walked this route earlier. Arlo was pleased, because it took them away from Chapters Deli and the possibility, however slim, of Nigel looking out of the window at precisely that moment. Just because it was lovely walking by Petra's side, his bike clicketting satisfyingly as he pushed it, didn't mean he wanted to be seen just yet.

Under the archway and through to the Old Stables.

'I never knew this was here,' said Arlo.

'Nor did I,' said Petra. 'A couple of months ago, I'd never even been this far north.'

Milk? Sugar?

Just black, please.

'Nice place,' said Arlo. 'How did you come by it?'

'It belongs to Charlton Squire.'

'Who? Sounds straight from the pages of a Bronte novel.'

'Hardly. He was named after Bobby and Jack. He's a famous jeweller who sometimes I work for and he has a gallery where I sell some of my pieces. He owns this place. He's from around here.'

Arlo thought for a split second. Well, it had to be asked. 'Is he your boyfriend?'

'He's gay,' Petra said, pleased to have been asked. Now ask me if I have a boyfriend, then I can say no.

'Do you have a boyfriend?'

'No.'

As she sipped coffee, she begged herself to enquire if he had a girlfriend but she dreaded an affirmative answer and left the question unasked.

'Do you want to see the studio?' Petra suggested because there's only so much gazing into coffee cups that two people can do. She led Arlo through the dark garden.

'Is this yours?' Arlo asked, putting down his mug and picking up some copper Petra had been working on.

'Yes, it's a rough. I plan to do it in white gold when I can afford the material.'

'It's beautiful.' Arlo looked at it intently, turning it this way and that. 'I remember watching you with your pots great thunking things they were, and you so tiny.'

Petra's turn to redden. She sipped loudly at her coffee, now gaggingly cold.

As they stood there, the workbench still between them like some benign chaperone, the time gap seeming to diminish with every new moment, a natural ease increasing, they shared a glance. They liked what they saw and what they saw was trans.m.u.ted into a feeling. The comfort of strangers who somehow know each other so well. In a glance, so much could be said.

'Will our past be enough?' Petra whispered, her eyes drawn to his.

'I think it's a really good foundation,' Arlo whispered back, dismissing the negativity he'd felt last night as a senseless byproduct of insomnia.

Slowly, she reached out to him; her arm, her hand, her fingers like a swan unfurling its neck. They touched fingertips before interlocking their hands. The contact, the affection; a connection that made communication easy.

'I wonder why we never-' Arlo stopped.

'I've been wondering about that,' Petra said.

'I suppose logistics played its part,' Arlo mused. 'I traipsed in to school from Potters Bar did you know that?'

Petra cast her mind back. Reluctantly, she had to shake her head. However much she felt she knew about Arlo, or remembered from seventeen years ago, she had to acknowledge there was much she might have forgotten or not known about at all.

'Maybe that's why you know you and me, we never.' He paused and shrugged. Petra nodded, felt bolstered again. 'But there again, do you remember how people not in the same school year seemed either much younger or way older?' Arlo smiled wistfully. 'And it's different nowadays schoolkids can flirt by email and text. They have their own phones for privacy and independence. They're much more savvy than we ever were. Ours was a time of "Mum? Can I use the phone?" and having to sit on the hall stairs with our hand cupped over the receiver. Perhaps if I'd lived nearer to you, we'd have b.u.mped into each other out of school time it would have been easier to have arranged to meet.'

'I met you at perhaps the loneliest time in my life,' Petra said, hoping she was reminding him, rather than imparting new information. 'My parents had split up. My dad had moved away, remarried. My mum and I moved and moved again.'

'I think I remember you telling me,' Arlo said slowly. He thought for a moment. 'I do remember that someone died. I remember that day. You, sitting on the iron fire escape at my school, sobbing clunks of unworked clay in your lap. I had my guitar and I played to your heaving shoulders for a while. "Among the Flowers", of course. But I distinctly remember playing "Cat's in the Cradle". Acoustically, it's such a perfect melody, but actually, it's an incredibly sad song daft b.a.s.t.a.r.d me for choosing it. I had played for you quite often but I just couldn't lure you around that time. So I slung my guitar behind my back and I came up to you and I put my arm around your little shoulders. Do you remember? And I kissed the top of your head.'

Reaching across the workbench again, Arlo gave Petra's hand a squeeze. 'I kissed the top of your head. Do you remember?' He took the palm of his hand to her cheek and she laid her face into his touch. 'It was the only time I ever kissed you,' he said.

If Miss Lorimar ever came into a lesson and spoke privately to the teacher, the girls knew something of magnitude had befallen one of them. On Wednesday 12 May of Petra's O levels year, Miss Lorimar came in halfway through the second part of Petra's double English lesson. Twenty minutes before lunch-break. Mrs Balcombe, the English teacher and Petra's favourite, nodded at the headmistress and tried desperately hard not to focus her one swift glance at anyone particular in her cla.s.s. But, for a crucial split second, Petra could feel Mrs Balcombe's eyes hone in on her.

'Petra,' Miss Lorimar said, omitting her surname for increased tenderness, 'will you come with me, please?'

But I'm meant to be visiting Mrs McNeil at lunch-time, Petra thought as she followed her headmistress along corridors and down stairs. I bought her a triple pack of Walnut Whips. I hate to be late.

'Sit down, dear,' Miss Lorimar said and instead of taking her own place in the grand swivel chair behind her large leather-topped desk, she sat in one of the matching blue leatherette chairs in front of it and motioned for Petra to sit at the other. These chairs were low and placed in the lie of the headmistress's desk; they inspired awe in parents who sat in them and a degree of terror in girls ever summoned here. That day, though, with Miss Lorimar in one and Petra in the other, it all felt rather genial.

Petra wondered if she was about to be congratulated. Perhaps she'd won something she'd sent a poem in to the Guardian and the same one to the Hampstead & Highgate Express. More likely, it was something to do with her parents. Again. She waited, a little sullenly.

'Petra.' Miss Lorimar's voice carried no indication of a prize. 'I have some very sad news. Very very sad news.'

As Miss Lorimar paused, Petra tried to guess but her heartbeat was a distraction. Guess. Guess. What. Who.

'Lillian McNeil pa.s.sed away last night, Petra. I'm so sorry. I know how much you meant to each other.'

Petra sat in shock and disbelief and as the desolation crept in, she felt her already small world shrink a little more. It was as if a layer had been peeled away. A layer that had been of the finest cashmere, one which had wrapped her in warmth and protection. She felt raw and desperately cold. She was s.h.i.+vering. 'Mrs McNeil?'

'Yes, dear. Peacefully. Last night.'

I sleepwalked last night. Mum complained this morning she has too much on her mind to be picking me up from crumpled heaps on the kitchen floor as well, or so she said.

Suddenly Petra had a feeling, desperate but sincere, that if she kept talking, kept asking questions, different information might transpire.

'She died last night?'

'Very peacefully.'

'Where?'

'On her way to hospital.'

'Hospital? She'd never been in hospital. Is there anyone at her flat?'

'No. I don't think so.'

'Should I go anyway, do you think? As arranged?'

'No.'

'No?'

'Petra dear,' and Petra could tell that her headmistress believed it would be a whole lot easier if the child just broke down and cried. 'I'm afraid that we have to let social services take over now. I know how well you looked after her, but officially she was in their care, you see.'

'She looked after me too,' Petra protested, 'and I know best just how she liked everything to be.'

And then Miss Lorimar put her hand out over Petra's wrist with the same stilted tenderness she'd displayed when talking to Petra of her parents two years before. 'You'll remember her your whole life.'

'I don't know what to do.' Petra had to mouth this because a punch of tears sat in a fist at her throat.

'Would you like to go home?' Miss Lorimar had asked but Petra's expression told her sharply that this was the last place she could go to for comfort.

'I'm going to make you a nice cup of tea and you can drink it here and sit quietly for as long as you like.'

When Miss Lorimar left the room, Petra buried her head in her hands and cried so completely from the depths of her heart that no sound came out at all.

How Petra had loved Wednesdays, especially during the summer term. Double English with Mrs Balcombe, a longer lunch period visiting Mrs McNeil, then pottery cla.s.s at Milton College all afternoon invariably enlivened by Arlo's company. She'd been working on a tall coil pot for Mrs McNeil. An umbrella stand onto which she'd incised Africanesque motifs, drawing on designs collected from books, from looking around Mrs McNeil's flat, from her own imagination. She'd be calling it an umbrella stand when it was finished, though really it was for Mrs McNeil's sticks. Mrs McNeil loathed her walking sticks, decrying them, A necessity I could d.a.m.n well do without. Mrs McNeil had taught Petra what a contradiction in terms was.

Miss Lorimar's cup of tea had been comforting to hold though Petra hadn't taken a sip. And now it was well and truly lunch-time because she could hear the stampede along the corridor, slowing right down past Miss Lorimar's office before picking up pace with chatter increasing too. Petra didn't much feel like the company of her contemporaries. Nor did she want Miss Lorimar glancing at her every few minutes. She just wanted to go to Mrs McNeil's. That's what Wednesdays were all about. This one in particular. And she'd take the Walnut Whips. And then she'd finish the umbrella stand. And she'd never ever forget her.

Petra climbed the stairs; her breathing laboured, the air heavy as if an invisible smog of sadness infused it. She reached Mrs McNeil's door, breathless. That sad old door-k.n.o.b held against the wood by the yellowing web of ancient Sellotape. She stopped for a moment and wondered what to do. Then she thought back to Mrs Balcombe's cla.s.s from which she'd been called away. The metaphysical poets. Donne's vehemence that death was not such a big deal at all, really.

For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow,

Die not

So Petra knocked for Mrs McNeil. Her usual pattern of raps. And then she flapped the letter-box too. Mistakes can be made. Miracles do happen.

Mrs McNeil! she whispered. Mrs McNeil? It's me. It's Petra. It's just Petra. It's only me.

She looked through the letter-box, catching sight of corners of furniture. All seemed peaceful and ordinary. She posted the Walnut Whips through. Mrs McNeil, she crouched and called. Are you there? But only the faint scent of cigarillos and lavender whispered back at her.

No one here, Petra. No one here at all.

And Petra squatted down onto her heels, tucking herself into the door jamb, and at last she cried. The loss of Mrs McNeil. The loss of their friends.h.i.+p. The loss of Wednesdays being the best day of the week.

But it's only me. It's only Petra. It's only me.

'I don't remember you kissing me, though,' Petra tells Arlo, her eyes damp from recalling the saddest day of her life. 'I don't really remember pottery at your school that afternoon.'

'I do,' says Arlo.

And holding her hand and stroking her cheek is no longer enough for him.

So he leans across the workbench, right across it. And he kisses the top of Petra's head. And Petra thinks, I'll never forget this kiss, this is the kiss that will last.

And Arlo is keeping his mouth there. And Petra is tipping her head back slowly, raising her face. She sees his chin. His lips, parted. His nose. His eyes. I know you, she thinks to herself, I know you off by heart. So she doesn't need to look to see. Arlo isn't a dream, or a fantasy. He appears to be very real. She can feel him. She can close her eyes now as he himself is doing and their first shared kiss, a slow and gentle brus.h.i.+ng of lips, speaks far more than they can possibly say just now.

And Petra thinks to herself how Mrs McNeil would most certainly approve.

Chapter Thirty-two.

What do you do when the kiss you didn't know you'd been waiting so long for, comes to its natural end?

If you are Petra Flint, you a.s.sess in an instant that the pause for breath concludes a period you now see as having been Part I.

As you stand and look at each other, you feel flushed and euphoric because it's all being mirrored back at you. They feel as you feel. See, it's written all over their face and their eyes gleam with your reflection. You are right at each other's core. It's overwhelming and it sends a charge through your body like electricity or hot blood. So you cup your hands around each other's heads and pull that lovely face to yours and this time, your tongue tips dart about and the romance, the chasteness of Part I slides sensuously into the desire and instantaneity of Part II. Part I was then. Part II is now.

Part III weds love, l.u.s.t and friends.h.i.+p, weaves them into a gossamer safety net that enables life to seem easy. Part III is a design for life which flows into forever. How many people are lucky enough to make it to Part III?