Two hands pawed at my face from behind, clumsy fingers poking at eyes and cheeks, and I screamed; a cackle echoed across the Quad. As I turned, Robin grinned her lop-sided smile, eyes puppet-wide and gleaming. ‘Come with me,’ she said, turning on her heels and walking away.
I stood, transfixed. ‘I still have classes,’ I called after her. She looked back, and I blushed, furiously, catching the eye of two girls, who’d turned to stare at the crack of nerves in my voice. My heart thudded with such force that I wondered if they could hear that, too; I smiled at them, willing them to look away.
‘Robin,’ I called again, as she loped away, headed towards the long school driveway. She didn’t look back; didn’t seem to care whether I followed, or not.
And so, without thought – without question, or doubt, or even the briefest flicker of pride – I followed her, down the hill and through the school gates, the Campanile bell sounding a warning behind.
‘Come on, just take one. One.’ Robin’s shoulder pressed against mine, in the town’s only real fashion store, where pop music hissed through invisible speakers, and girls tripped giggling between changing rooms, making catwalks of the aisles.
‘I can’t,’ I whispered back, looking down at the candied rows of nail polish, names underneath seeming all wrong, the inverse of themselves: Buttercup for a grassy green, Seashell for baby-blue, Moonlight for black.
‘It’s not difficult,’ she whispered. ‘I’ll show you.’ I watched her hands glide above, like a magician practising a sleight-of-hand. She paused, hovering briefly for a moment, plucked a neon yellow from the rack. In a single, swift motion, it disappeared. Even watching, I couldn’t tell whether it was in her pocket, or up her sleeve.
‘See?’ She moved to admire a case of lipsticks, their black cases shining like beetles. I stood, stunned, waiting for a looming security guard to swoop in and drag us away.
Nothing happened. No one came.
I followed Robin to the counter, where she hovered, thoughtfully chewing her lip. ‘It’s my birthday next week,’ she said, pointedly. Her eyes fixed on a red lipstick. ‘That’d go so well with my hair, don’t you think?’
‘I’ll buy it for you,’ I said. ‘I don’t mind.’ I had twenty pounds in my purse, my weekly allowance – though I also knew Mum’s bank details, and that the settlement sat there, largely untouched. It rarely occurred to either of us, it seemed – that we could have things, live differently, somehow. So we went on as we always had, with off-brand canned foods and frozen microwave dinners. For Mum, it was enough.
Robin rolled her eyes. ‘Whatever. If you’re too scared, then don’t.’
‘I’m not scared,’ I said, uselessly.
‘Well then,’ she said, turning to examine a baby-pink t-shirt she’d never, ever wear, eyes lowered, watchful.
I put a trembling hand over the counter, picking one, then another, examining each with what I hoped was casual disinterest. The harried sales assistant explained a refund policy to the mother of a screaming nine-year-old; as the assistant turned away, I slipped the lipstick into my palm, and down my sleeve.
A hand at my shoulder, a heavy slap. I flinched.
‘Good girl,’ Robin said. ‘Let’s go.’
The air in the street outside was a thrilling relief. I gulped, realizing I’d been holding my breath since I’d tucked the lipstick into my jacket. As we walked, she slid the nail polish out and held it between finger and thumb, close to my face. ‘Got something for you, too.’ I felt a rush of warmth, a sweet thrill at the gift.
I slid the lipstick from my sleeve, and did the same. She took it, clicking open a mirror she pulled from her pocket – an item even I hadn’t seen her take – and applied a dark slick to her lips as we walked, shoppers forced to dodge her, tutting as they passed.
‘How do I look?’ she said, turning to me, pouting.
‘Gorgeous,’ I laughed. It was true. To me, at least, she did.
She grabbed me by the shoulder and planted an exaggerated, ridiculous kiss on my cheek. ‘Now you’re gorgeous too,’ she said, grinning, the lipstick smudged with the impact, flecks of red on her teeth. I felt I ought to laugh, but couldn’t; I was too stunned. I stumbled along beside her, speechless and blind, as she chattered on about classes, homework she refused to do (‘on principle,’ she said, not explaining what, exactly, the principle was) and girls she hated, their crimes seeming to me like instructions, things I would no longer say or do.
As I look back, it seems ridiculous. And yet, though I have loved, and been loved, in the decades since we met, no infatuation could compare to the outrageous intensity of those first weeks with Robin.
I wanted to know every part of her, and she craved my secrets just the same. We each felt the raw crush of the other’s nerve-endings; we shared experiences great and small, sitting under trees dropping red leaves around us, glowing in the autumn sun. Occasionally, I would think of Emily Frost, as we passed the faded posters stuck to lampposts and trees, and the question would gather in my throat – Is she the reason you like me? But I’d brush the thought away, press it wilfully into forgetting, and take her interest in me as my own; raise some new topic of conversation, a new intimacy shared.
It seems impossible, now, to imagine an intensity so feverish, such delirium. Perhaps that’s a symptom of getting older. One’s feelings wear down, no longer sparking so keenly. Still, when I think of Robin, of those early days when our friendship was new and unfamiliar, I feel a swell deep within my chest, an echo of those heady days, when we ducked into a rain-battered chip shop and shared a single cone as we walked along the promenade, laughing at the withered old women and screaming kids, who seemed so stupid, so beneath us, so deserving of our contempt. When we smoked rolled-up cigarettes and stubbed them out in the sand, the detritus of summer – cans, fools’ emeralds made from broken bottles – shifting beneath our feet. When we drank sickly-sweet alcopops from glass bottles, breaking the caps on the metal backs of graffitied bus seats. Every breath, every moment, possessed with an illusion of glamour, of filthy decadence, purely because it was ours, we two our own radical world, a star collapsing inwards and bursting, gorgeous, in the dark.
Not, of course, that I was able to imagine this then, still chattering shyly as we walked along the pier, the setting sun turning the sea blood-red. I heard a familiar voice, and turned to see Nicky bounding towards the two of us. Robin let out a groan, and I swatted her arm. ‘Shhh,’ I hissed, feeling my cheeks redden as Nicky approached, caught in a lie. I’d mentioned her invitation to Robin earlier – this, admittedly, an attempt at making Robin jealous, though it seemed only to have the opposite effect: she had told me I was lucky, blessed to have been rescued, her hatred of Nicky vicious and clear.
And yet, I realized, as Nicky approached, it was Robin’s idea to come here, now.
‘How are you doing?’ Nicky said, as she strolled towards us, clutching an enormous stuffed bear (or cat – it was cheaply made, and hard to tell). She saw me staring at it. ‘Ben—’ she turned and pointed to a tall, tanned boy in a football shirt, lurking several paces behind ‘—he won it for me. Isn’t it cute?’
‘If you’re into that kind of thing,’ Robin muttered.
Nicky ignored her, and turned to me. ‘Are you coming to the party on Friday?’
She looked at Robin, who scowled back. ‘What party?’ I said, at the same time as Robin said ‘Yeah, she’s coming,’