‘You what?’
‘He conned you, Izzy.’ Thing is, Max isn’t smug or vicious or mean, he’s just, like, you should have known – we all know what Jacob’s like, yeah.
And I try to say something, but Max’s words have torn into my heart and down into my stomach, my head spinning with the kaleidoscope of pictures Jacob would never have had if I hadn’t been so stupid. So naive. So me. It must be obvious too, cos Max lays a you-all-right hand on my shoulder, sits me down on a garden wall.
‘I can’t believe you fell for it. I mean, I know you were pissed at that party, Izzy, but were you honestly that out of it that you couldn’t remember what you’d done? Maybe ease up on the drink next time, yeah?’
What else can I say but ‘Yeah’?
‘You still going? To Jacob’s?’
‘What choice do I have?’
Max looks at me like it’s a given. ‘S’pose.’
‘He hasn’t, you know, shown you anything, has he?’
‘Nah, mate. Just told me what he’s got. Anyway, least you didn’t have to wait until you’re twenty-six! Silver linings.’
And I must look at him, like, you cannot be fucking serious, cos Max is all ‘Sorry, my bad, and I shouldn’t make a joke of it, but…’
‘You couldn’t have a word with him, could you?’
‘With Jacob?’ And he doesn’t have to say anything else cos the snuff of won’t make a blind bit of difference is clear enough to make his point. ‘I’m sorry, Izzy.’ And he sounds it too, looks like he’d do something if he could, but this is Jacob we’re talking about, right?
‘See you later then.’ I put my earphones back in but don’t bother pressing play because, you know what, it feels like all the music has gone.
It’s a bit like being at home, cos Jacob and I don’t talk, not beyond the ‘All right’, ‘You wanna drink?’, ‘’S OK’, ‘Come on’, ‘Won’t you just…’ and ‘Mmmm’. Difference is, here in his bedroom, the quiet isn’t burdened with not knowing. We’re the opposite of that cos there’s no question of what we’re here for, of why, less than twenty-four hours after my First Time, I’m back for a second go.
His laptop, rose gold and gleaming, is still open on his desk, streaming films that are different but pretty much the same as before, another heap of those bodies with their compressed wet flesh, mashed into each other like naked commuters on the rush-hour Tube, slick men casually taking from all those blank women unconvincingly up for the game.
Am I up for it? I don’t say if I’m not. I lie still, roll when I’m told and drift through Jacob’s pleasure, my left hand reaching for the thin strip of light on the floor, wishing the tug of it could pull me up and away to the moon.
It had seemed so reachable when I was a little kid, everything had, before Daniel swept in with his love and his brawn and his gravity.
I let go of the light and give into the weighty cloak of Jacob’s body and, you know what, there’s a small release in it, in the obviousness and simplicity of what he needs, in how easily he takes it. And even when I see how he’s not looking at me but at his laptop, this expression on his face that’s not quite pleasure not quite pain, even then it’s easy, sort of peaceful, I guess, because the moon isn’t an option, because the dark is just that, no glimmer or slither of anything bright.
But then Jacob’s grunts go from satisfaction to frustration, and his hands are a desperate grip at my shoulders to keep him going, his face hard, his dick soft, the condom snapped off and into the bin, and his voice slurs my name as he says I haven’t done enough, I’m not shaved enough or wet enough, and his eyes flit back to the screen where the guy’s monstrous penis stands as raging and red as fire.
It’s only then, when the lamp makes light on the barest, ugliest bits of me, that I feel the depth of my hollowness, wondering how I’ll ever fill it in.
‘I swear it hasn’t happened before,’ he says, and it’s funny, right, how that shame in his voice is the one and only thing we have in common.
I’m pulling my jeans up over my knees when Jacob tosses me my bag.
‘Tomorrow, Izzy. Finish what we started, yeah.’
And I nod because, honestly, I think maybe my words are as futile as the music, cos my fate is pretty much done.
FOURTEEN
Despite the still light sky, the moon’s kind of huge now, shoving its fullness in my face as I creep out of Jacob’s back door, throwing its white light over the big lump of me thudding my way across his garden.
‘Head down the side,’ he’d said, ‘along the fence. No one’ll see you there.’
Neither of us mentioned why he seemed so keen on secrecy.
My fingers pull at my phone like it’s a magnet, checking for notifications from Grace, which don’t come, obviously, cos despite all that bullshit she feeds me about how she’d die – ‘literally,’ she says – if we don’t speak for, like, an hour, she’s found another life source in Nell. Their special night, their ‘amazing dinner’ and that chocolate fucking pudding are so much more appealing than me.
The ache between my legs is as rough as the ache in my heart because, despite that five-year-old kid in me hoping she might be frantic with me storming out of the house before, there’s nothing from Mum.
But maybe she was – frantic, I mean – cos when I turn the corner into our street, she’s there, my mum, the same mum who’s not really been outside without Daniel in, like, forever. She’s right there without him, pulling me into the car, which is parked on the street, only a few seconds’ walk from the front door. And she’s telling me it doesn’t matter that she hasn’t driven in three years, because it’ll be like riding a bike. And she says this as if it’s supposed to be reassuring even though we both know the last time I rode a bike, I cut my thigh so deep I needed stitches, and I haven’t dared get back on one since. And she says this like the positivity in her words counts for more than the panic in her eyes. And she says this in a voice that’s the ratcheting crank of a roller coaster as it nears the top of its highest, scariest climb.
‘In the car, Isabel.’ And she’s not kidding. Her knuckles taut from her hands lugging the bags, already packed for each of us, on to the back seat, she tells me, ‘Get a move on – he’ll be home soon. It’s time to go.’
‘OK,’ I tell her, ‘I’ll get in the car.’
And her chest heaves, surging this swell of breath so heavy it makes a rope between us, until I turn to go shut that front door and she shouts at me, ‘No!’ This too is change, because my mum, the same mum who’s not been outside without Daniel in, like, forever, the same mum who talks – if she dares talk – in whispers, says, ‘Now.’ And her voice is a knife’s edge. ‘It’s time.’ Her face, tilted upwards, is cast pale but strong as steel. ‘Destination moon,’ she says.
And our cardboard rocket is a Vauxhall Astra and our space is the Thanet Way.
FIFTEEN