You Only Live Once Page 24

  ‘So what are you going to do? Ollie said, taking his phone out of his pocket and reading a text. He was clearly losing interest in proceedings.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said quietly.

  Which brought me to the last item on my list. The most difficult one of all.

  5. Decide what to do with the rest of my life

  ‘Do you want to get a job?’ Mum said. ‘You’d be starting at the bottom but you could work your way up, I suppose. Karen’s boy, Luke, started as a cashier in the bank and now he’s a … I don’t know … relationship manager or something. He wears a nice shirt every day anyway. And he has a sign on his desk, a gold one with his name engraved. Karen’s told me about it four times.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said again. ‘I don’t think so. I mean, it’s not that I think I know everything –’

  ‘Just most things?’ Ollie raised one eyebrow.

  ‘No! It’s just that I don’t want to be bored and stressed and miserable for the next two years just so I can do a job that makes me bored and stressed and miserable.’

  ‘That wouldn’t be ideal,’ Dad conceded.

  ‘Come to college with me,’ Ollie said.

  This was actually the idea that I kept coming back to. It was like Til had said: I needed to find a compromise.

  ‘Yes. I think I might want to do that, actually. I think that might be OK.’

  Ollie laughed. ‘You’re joking? You’ve spent the whole summer going off the rails and have gathered us here for a family meeting to say you want to go to college instead of sixth form. Biggest anti-climax ever.’

  ‘Oliver!’ Dad said. ‘Sometimes these things come full circle. And it’s good that you want to go to college. What do you want to do?’

  We talked some more and agreed that not only did I not know what I was going to do after college, I didn’t want to know. Everything could be different in two years’ time. It was like what Ollie had said to me the day he’d told me about his Music Production course: sometimes it was nice to enjoy the process, rather than worrying about the result. I wanted to enjoy the next two years, not just wait for them to be over.

  In the end, Mum and I went down to the college admissions office and had a long discussion about my options, and given that it was catastrophically late to be having this change of heart, I was well aware I might have to wait a year to be allowed in at all. After looking at the prospectus and the timetabling that had already been arranged and thinking about what I would actually be interested in, I settled on three subjects:

  Art: because it was fun.

  Business Studies: because despite the dubious morals of the endeavour, I had quite enjoyed the creative challenge of setting up Madame Violet’s studio.

  Psychology: so next time I had an existential crisis I might be better equipped to deal with it.

  It turned out to be quite the summer of existential crises, because along with me going off the rails and Ollie deciding that his future – his immediate future, anyway – lay in music production, Dad had also decided to make some changes.

  After a few weeks of nerve-wracking waiting to hear whether he was going to be made redundant, he eventually found out that his job was safe. But, the news didn’t please him as much as he thought.

  ‘I’d sort of got used to the idea of a fresh start,’ he explained. ‘I’d already looked into becoming a sailing instructor at the marina. And now … I don’t know.’

  Dad talked it over with Mum and he agreed to drop down to three days a week in his computer job, and for the other two, he’d give the sailing a proper shot.

  ‘If it doesn’t work out, I can always go back up to full time,’ he explained. ‘I just don’t want to waste all day every day doing something I hate.’

  ‘Hey, you don’t need to justify it to me, Dad,’ I said. ‘I totally get it.’

  Freshers

  On the Friday that marked the end of the first week at college, some boys from the year above arranged a kind of informal freshers-style drinks on the beach.

  I headed down with Til. After a difficult summer friendship-wise, it felt like she and I were getting back on track, and far from being annoyed that I was encroaching on her territory by deciding to join her at college, she said she was pleased. When I’d gone to see her to let her know my change of plans, she admitted that she too had been rethinking her options. Now, alongside her plumbing NVQ she was studying for a psychology A level, so we’d be in the same class.

  She’d come over all coy when she’d told me. Sheepish even.

  ‘I know I’m not exactly the academic one and I didn’t think I was into all that psychobabble stuff anyway, but I’ve been reading bits lately on the internet about why Mum is such a fruit loop and it’s kind of interesting. It would be nice to know what’s what, you know?’

  As we arrived on the beach and slung our jackets down in the centre of one of the little circles of people that were dotted over the stones, I spotted Sarah, sitting cross-legged with a few people from her year. She’d had her hair cut into a neat bob. She looked nice. It was nice, to see her there, at the same event as me. I liked the idea that we shared something now, that we were part of the same community.

  I had had to check – to double-check with myself, and with Til – that my decision to ditch school in favour of college was nothing to do with Sarah’s attendance at the latter. That would not have been an acceptable reason to alter my life course. I think I passed the check, though. It wasn’t to do with her, not really. Not at all, actually. But that didn’t change the fact that I spent much of each day half expecting – half hoping – to bump into her, in the canteen, in the corridor. Anywhere, really.

  I’d definitely hoped she’d be there that evening.

  I think she must have sensed me looking at her, because she looked up and smiled. But then she turned back to her conversation and I sat down thinking that was it. That was all the interaction I was going to get. A smile. I’d spent twenty minutes deciding what T-shirt to wear for a smile.

  But then, ten or fifteen minutes later, I saw her stand up and move away from her little group and head over to where Til and I were sitting.

  ‘Hey,’ she said, crouching down next to us. ‘I thought I’d seen you around college.’

  I nodded. ‘Yeah.’ That was it. That was all I could think to say.

  Til got up and excused herself. Sarah sat down properly, crossing her legs. ‘You should’ve said you were coming tonight. I didn’t realise.’

  ‘Well, you said you’d text and so I didn’t want to text you and I didn’t think you’d actually be that interested anyway – that I was coming here, I mean – but then you didn’t text me at all and so … I don’t know.’ It came out in a rush. An unrestrained gush of words.

  Sarah laughed. ‘Beautifully put.’

  I smiled.

  ‘I did want to text,’ she said slowly ‘But …’ She trailed off.

  ‘But just not enough to actually do it?’ I suggested. I’d meant it as a joke but I’d delivered it like a criticism and Sarah looked wounded.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said.

  She sighed. ‘The thing is, Grace, you kind of made me feel like an idiot. I said “I like you” and then next thing I know you’re snogging some Australian.’

  I nodded sadly. ‘I was the idiot. Not you.’

  ‘Yes,’ Sarah agreed. ‘Perhaps.’

  I didn’t know what to say to this. I’d messed it all up. And I’d said sorry but there was nothing else I could do about it. I felt sad.

  Sarah stretched her legs out in front of her and leant back on her elbows. ‘You want to come to Alton Towers?’ she said suddenly.

  I looked at her. ‘What? Now?’

  She laughed. ‘No. Next weekend. For my birthday. Johnny’s driving.’ She nodded over towards a boy with tattoos down one arm who I vaguely recognised from college.

  I shrugged and smiled. ‘OK,’ I said. ‘Sure. Sounds good.’

  ‘Great,’ she said. ‘I’ll text you
.’

  I looked at her. She laughed. ‘No, I mean I will actually text you.’

  I smiled and Sarah kissed me.

  It was only on the cheek but it was enough for Til to raise her eyebrows from where she was sitting a few metres away and for a drunk man who was part of a stag party to let out a small cheer.

  Spider

  On the way home that night, I passed the part of the beach outside Bar Ten where I’d spent so many evenings that summer with Vicky and Spider. I don’t know why but I couldn’t help scanning the crowd for them. It was just strange, I think, how quickly and comprehensively they had both entered and left my life.

  I didn’t see them. I didn’t think they were there. They’d be in the flat probably, watching pointless television and drinking beers and bickering.

  Then I heard a voice.

  ‘Grace?’

  Spider.

  I looked at him. He looked tired. I didn’t say anything.

  ‘How are you?’ he said.

  I shrugged. ‘Yeah, fine.’ I was cold. My tone was unfriendly; I knew it was. It was deliberate. He hadn’t actively participated when Vicky had been laying into me but neither had he raised any objections or done anything to stop it.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said quietly. ‘Really sorry.’

  ‘Right,’ I said. ‘OK.’ I wasn’t going to make it easy for him.

  ‘You were right,’ he said.

  ‘About what?’

  ‘Everything. What we were doing. I wanted to tell that woman – Carol – but I didn’t know how to find her –’

  ‘I sorted it.’

  He looked surprised. ‘Oh, OK. Thanks, then.’

  We were quiet again.

  ‘Vicky … she’s got issues,’ he went on.

  ‘Yep.’ No arguments from me there.

  ‘She’s gone.’

  ‘Where?’

  Spider shrugged. ‘I kicked her out. It’s my flat. My uncle’s, anyway. So I don’t know now. Australia? London? I want to get my life together. My uncle died last week. I hadn’t been bothered to see him. Not for ages. That isn’t me. It wasn’t before, at least. I’m a good person, Grace.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘I want to help people. Do something. I’m going to train. As something. Maybe law. I haven’t decided.’

  ‘OK. Well, good luck.’

  ‘Same to you, Grace. Good luck. I think you’re going to be great. Whatever you do, you’ll be great at it.’ He gave me a wide smile, but there were tears in his eyes.

  The Future

  I did a lot of things that summer that I wasn’t proud of, but once I started to make amends for those things, I realised that it hadn’t been a total disaster.

  There had been plenty of moments that I’d enjoyed and, more importantly, some moments that I would always be grateful for.

  Some of these were obvious.

  Spending some of the last days of Nan’s life with her in Paris was something I’d never forget. Talking to Ollie – properly talking – about our futures and our lives meant that we got on better now than we ever had, although we still argued weekly, if not daily.

  Some bits hadn’t necessarily been enjoyable, but I was still glad I’d done them, in the end.

  Having a go on Rush was certainly an experience.

  It was good to be able to say I’d tried frogs’ legs.

  Til and I still laughed about our afternoon on Nobby and Petal.

  One thing that I was surprised about enjoying though, was my twenty minutes in the Age Awareness UK IT centre with William.

  I couldn’t stop thinking about William and his late wife (June who died in January) and Jerry (who’d met a lively young lady on a cruise) and his daughters Dawn (without a job) and Abigail (with a puppy).

  I’d written ‘Help a fellow person’ on the list without much thought, but something that occurred to me as the summer drew to a close, was that part of the reason I’d been driving myself so crazy was because I’d been so completely self-absorbed. I’d spent weeks and weeks thinking about what experiences I wanted to have and what I wanted to do with my life and how I could be happy.

  I, I, I. Me, me, me.

  The refreshing thing about the short time I’d spent helping William was that I wasn’t thinking about myself at all, just for a while.

  It was like what Mum had said about being too busy with her three children and full-time job to worry too much about her calling. Maybe, I reasoned, if I was helping some other people with their problems, I wouldn’t be so focused on my own that I’d end up having another self-indulgent existential crisis.

  I went back to the IT Centre. This time I actually added my details to the form, and two days later I got a call inviting me to a training day.

  It turned out that I should never have let this fairly straightforward hoop put me off, as it actually consisted of nothing more than an hour’s briefing with an IT technician on the various idiosyncrasies of the IT set-up, followed by a chat with Linda, the centre manager, about the time commitment I could offer and what to do if anyone got stroppy with me. The following Saturday morning, I headed down to the IT centre for my first session – a fairly gentle ten till twelve shift. I’d asked Linda to let William know I was going to be there. I didn’t think he’d be particularly interested, but I felt bad about the way I’d dashed off the last time I’d seen him.

  As it turned out, William was interested. So much so that he’d made a special trip especially to see me.

  ‘I’ve been practising, you know. Typing. Still takes me an hour or two for an email but better than four hours! I’m going to email Abigail now. You just watch, I’ll have the whole thing done before eleven!’

  ‘That great!’ I told him.

  And it was, because he did.

  Before the end of my shift, I showed William how to use Skype, which his family had told him about but which he assumed would be too technical for him. Dawn, he told me, had just announced she was pregnant, and the thought that he would be able to see the baby on the screen with his own eyes as soon as it emerged, delighted him ‘beyond words’.

  ‘It is good of you,’ William told me as he gathered his handwritten pages and pens and notebook full of passwords into the carrier bag he kept with him, ‘to give up your time like this. I always think, young people these days, they’ve got better things to be doing, haven’t they? Wouldn’t you rather be out there, having fun?’

  I laughed. ‘Sometimes,’ I said. ‘Sometimes. But not all the time.’

  Read on for a sneak peek at what Gracie gets up to next, in To Be Perfectly Honest …

  ‘For fifty days, I, Grace Georgina Dart, pledge to be completely, 100% honest at all times.’

  PART 1:

  Where we are all living a lie

  The Idea of a Party

  It was Friday night and I was on my way to a party. This was not a normal Friday night for me.

  It wasn’t just any party either. It was a warehouse party, on an industrial estate, where an actual DJ would be playing music on actual decks. I was excited by the way it all sounded. It sounded fun and cool and a little bit crazy.

  In fact, I was so excited by the idea of the party that I was forcing myself to ignore the part of my brain telling me that the reality might not be quite as good.

  I had been to parties before, but I wasn’t yet convinced they were for me. I’d heard about good ones happening, but the ones I found myself at always seemed to just be people I didn’t know very well sitting around in cramped rooms, talking about nothing and drinking out of plastic cups. And that was basically what we did every day in the canteen anyway. Except, at least in the canteen you could buy chips and we all had our own chair to sit on.

  Everyone else was very excited about the location, but I think maybe the industrial estate element was putting me off. Industrial estates were cold and dirty, weren’t they? Full of dark shadows and big signs for companies you’d never heard of. They were the kind of place you go w
ith your dad on a Saturday morning to wait in the car in the rain while he talks to a man in overalls about how many bags of cement it takes to make a driveway.

  Still, none of this mattered because even if the plan had been to hold the party in a toilet-brush factory, there was still no way I would be missing it. I was only in my second week at Coniston College, for heaven’s sake. If I started being the kind of person to turn down party invites in favour of staying at home to watch Gardeners' World with my parents at this delicate stage in my life, I might never shake the label. I might never get invited anywhere again.

  I was with Til, my oldest friend, and Reeta, my newest. Til and I had been friends since we were thirteen. Reeta I’d met just two weeks earlier, in my psychology class. The three of us had gathered on the corner at the bottom of the hill outside Til’s block of flats, as arranged, to walk up to the party together. Til was wearing what she always wore – black jeans, black boots and a black jumper. Reeta, for some reason, was wearing a rainbow tutu and pink fairy wings.

  ‘It’s not fancy dress, is it?’ I asked, suddenly alarmed. I hated fancy dress but I hated the idea of being the odd one out more.

  ‘No,’ Reeta said, twirling around on the pavement like a ballerina. ‘I just like to wear a statement piece.’

  Til raised an eyebrow. ‘What statement are you making? That you’re insane?’

  ‘Til!’ I said. I was used to Til’s bluntness but I thought it might be a bit early in the friendship to be unleashing it on Reeta like this.

  Reeta seemed unfazed though. She just grinned, shrugged, took out a four-pack of Snickers from her bag and ate one in two mouthfuls. Reeta was always eating but her four-times-a-week cross-country running hobby meant that she was still no wider than a lamp-post.

  ‘Energy,’ she explained. ‘For the rave.’

  She offered me one, but I shook my head. I didn’t want to turn up at my first industrial warehouse party smelling of peanuts.