‘I don’t know what it’s like. Might be awful.’
‘Doesn’t matter,’ he replied.
He felt pleased that she wanted to be with him – they wouldn’t usually do this. They’d just hang about and get a pastie or some chips. His mum used to tell him he needed to relax a bit and not to have everything set out, but it was hard.
The café was nice inside. There were tablecloths and chairs that matched. It was the kind of place that he wouldn’t go on his own.
‘I’ll just get a drink,’ he said.
‘No, you’ve got to get the soup and sandwich with me.’
He wondered if this was a date – the nice clothes she was wearing, the café? It must mean something.
After they’d been served, he pressed the petal on the flower in the vase on the middle of the table and watched her. He was too nervous to eat and was glad it was only soup. The bread roll crumbs fell onto her top and he had to stop himself from reaching out to brush them off. The waitress smiled over. Her pinafore was pure white, not a drip of coffee on it. She thinks we’re a couple, he decided.
‘Did you hear about that thing at Lyme Park?’ Maggie asked.
‘The police were there weren’t they?’
She leant forwards. ‘Some woman found something when she was walking her dog.’
Jacob stirred his tomato soup and frowned. ‘What was it?’
‘Bits of a body or something.’
‘Gross,’ he told her.
‘I know.’ Maggie looked up at the ceiling.
Jacob waited for her to say something, but she didn’t. He watched her tear at the bread, sending crumbs everywhere. He didn’t want to talk about what they’d found up there. He didn’t want to know. If he was good at conversation then he’d find something funny to tell her, but he wasn’t. He wasn’t like Matty Vincent who could just talk about nothing.
Maggie looked at her watch for the third time since they came into the café. He hoped to take her to the cinema afterwards, or a safe place where he didn’t have to worry about talking, but it was going wrong. He hadn’t been prepared. If he’d known it was going to be a date, he would have thought about what to say first. He’d have had some stories ready and a list of things to ask her. Usually they just messed about and had a laugh together. He wasn’t used to seeing her looking so nice and it made him nervous. He thought about what it would be like if he could get rid of the Vincents and just be with her all the time. If that happened, things would be a lot easier.
‘Why are you smiling?’ she asked.
He hadn’t realised that he was. ‘I wasn’t.’
She pulled back her chair and grabbed the coat from the back of the chair. ‘It was alright, that. I’ve got to meet the girls though, I’m already late.’ He wanted to grab her and pull her back down, but he started to stutter.
‘We’ve only just got here.’
She shrugged. ‘I just needed to use my voucher. Bob gave it to me at the theatre. He’s a tight bastard so I had to use it. Give it to the woman, will you?’
He sat back down as she walked out of the café and across the road into a group of people. He always managed to get it wrong. He just wasn’t sure how it kept happening.
‘Your girl in a rush then, sweetie?’ the waitress asked, as she chewed her pink bubble gum through glossy lips.
‘She’s meeting someone.’
‘So long as you’re not going to do a runner.’ The waitress smiled as she put her pen to her glossy lips. ‘Fancy a dessert from the specials?’
He shook his head. ‘No, we’ve got a voucher. It just says soup and sandwich.’
The waitress nodded before she walked away.
Jacob left the voucher on the table and followed Maggie outside. He hated that he was following her again and kept well back in case she saw him. She was easy to spot; he could hear the little heels clicking against the pavement, bright red against the tarmac.
Jacob didn’t believe that she was meeting the girls. She was too dressed up for that and it was obvious she was going somewhere special. He watched through the crowd as she walked through the precinct, barely able to walk.
As he waited by the street corner, he felt sick inside. The need to have her was starting to hurt again and if he could get rid of it, he would. He wondered where it had come from. They’d always been friends, but recently it was like an itch that wouldn’t go away. He was thinking about her all the time.
If he could touch her skin and feel her mouth on his just once, then perhaps that would be enough, but he doubted it. He wondered what his mum would think about it. He wished he could talk to her. She’d always liked Maggie. She’d bought her a magic set for her birthday once and the pair of them had practised for ages. His mother was full of tricks too, but she saved the best trick for the end. There on the bridge one moment and then gone. Jacob stopped walking.
He sat on the bench at the bottom of the hill and waited. He knew Maggie wouldn’t catch him as he watched her go, wondering who she was meeting this time. Someone from the youth club maybe, or school? Matty Vincent? She’d been distant lately, not ringing him as much as she used to. He thought it was just that she was busy, but maybe she’d just lost interest in him. Or worse, she’d come to the same conclusion that everyone else had. That he wasn’t worth knowing.
As he got to the top of the hill, Maggie waved at a girl and ran over the road towards her. The sound of laughter came from further up as two more of her friends appeared from around the corner. He knew he shouldn’t be there. She wasn’t lying. He was an idiot. He walked away. She was different, she had people that wanted to spend time with her while he had no one but her.
When he reached the top of the hill, he could see that the traffic was busy. From beyond the road, the sound of a girl’s scream made him look round. She shrieked with laughter as a man grabbed her around the waist and Jacob continued on with his head down.
He watched the cars, the same patterns and movements he knew so well, the motorway and its noises. He watched the cars as they went under the bridge and on to other places while he stood there. Nothing mattered – this was always moving, never stopping. It was relentless. He hadn’t fitted in anywhere since his mum went, but nothing else changed. It all kept moving on without him. Maggie was the only one that made things bearable.
He looked at the buildings and tried to memorise the lines so that he could draw them later. He imagined taking it apart, piece by tiny piece, line by tiny line, every shadow and every ridge. He remembered the pain in his fingers where the pencil had caused a ridge in his skin because he’d used it so much. It hurt, like he’d been hurt.
He knew he’d done the right thing by not following Maggie for any longer, but not knowing where she was now felt bad. It was how it always was. The children at school would talk about him in the playground – pretending not to see him – and the sideways glances of the teachers made his head hurt. He was sick of people either feeling sorry for him or thinking there was something wrong with him. That was why he liked Maggie, she was never like that and that’s why he mustn’t lose her. She treated him like he was the same as the rest of them, when he knew that he wasn’t.