“Get out,” she cried snatching it away.
“One pound eighty, Miss,” demanded the storekeeper tetchily, wise to the possibility that the squabble over the bag might be cover for the half dozen teenagers loitering near the candy display.
“Blimey, you should get done for overcharging mate. I’m only a kid,” And they giggled as they slipped out of the store.
“Come on Trude, let’s see it,” nagged Margery, pinning her against a bus shelter.
“I left it home,” she said nonchalantly, clutching the bag to her chest in case Margery should see it stuck into her Math book. “I’ll fetch it at lunchtime.”
“When are you going to meet him?”
“I dunno. He wants to take me for a ride in his Jag. Reckons if I get the train up to his place he’ll bring me back in it.”
“Yeah, as long as he gets inside your pants,” Margery laughed, “otherwise he’ll leave you stranded. I’ve met blokes like him before.”
“You don’t know nothing about him. He ain’t nothing like that. In fact, he doesn’t agree with sex before marriage.”
Margery threw her head back, “Humph—say’s who?” But didn’t expect a reply.
The photograph smouldered in Trudy’s bag all morning. Not that she wasn’t dying to flourish it in Margery’s face. But what would Margery say? “What’s a hunk like him see in a girl like you?”
Finally, too hot to hold on to, she flipped the picture under Margery’s nose in the photocopy room at lunchtime.
“Streuth,” the girl exclaimed enviously. “ What a looker.”
“Yeah—he’s pretty gorgeous.”
Grabbing the photograph on the pretext of holding it up to the light, Margery slipped it into the copier and pushed 10 before Trudy could stop her.
“Here I don’t want everyone after him,” screeched Trudy, whipping it from under the lid as the machine spat out the first print.
Margery caught the single copy and tried to run. Trudy slammed the door and stood guard. “Give it back.”
“It ain’t yours. It’s a photocopy.”
“Marg,” she implored, “Please don’t show it to no one.”
“What’s it worth?” she teased, holding it high, out of reach.
“I won’t tell your mum about the condoms I saw in your purse.”
“Silly cow. Me mum gave ’em to me. Hasn’t your mum given you any?”
“Please, please don’t show it Marg,” Trudy begged, but her concern waned as her mind shifted to other thoughts. How come Mum never gave me condoms? How come she never told me about sex?
“O.K.,” said Margery, giving in as if it were of no consequence, “I won’t show no one.” But she kept the photocopy.
Trudy dragged herself back to the present and re-read the phrase, “Mum. Roger kidnapped me.” It’s not right, she thought, it’s not fair, and the little curser scooted back across the screen at the touch of her finger as she deleted “kidnapped” one painful letter at a time. The effort required her total concentration and, as she considered what to type in its place, her mind wandered back to her meeting with Roger.
It was a Friday, the same day Margery left for France with her parents. Trudy saw them off. “Looks like you’re goin’ on safari,” she laughed as Margery packed herself into the hired campervan next to the kitchen sink, under a box of emergency rations: Kellog’s Cornflakes—cost a bomb in France; All Bran—gotta keep everyone regular, says her mother; a hunk of Cheddar cheese—can’t stand that stinky French muck, says her father, complaining simultaneously about the French, the language, the toilets, the prices, the beer, gnat’s piss; and the Germans?— “Bloody jerries think they own the beaches.”
“Shut up and drive,” says her mother, sliding into the navigator’s seat, her hair rollers turning her headscarf into a porcupine. “But wait ’til we get to Paris and I show them poncy boulevardiers a proper hair-do.”
Trudy waved goodbye with a tinge of jealousy, although Margery had confided in her the previous day that it would be disastrous. “D’ye think my dad’ll let me get within a mile of any decent French bloke?” she’d scoffed. “Not likely.” Anyway, Trudy had her own plans. She had a date with Roger.
School officially finished at 4:30 p.m. but she left an hour early, telling the office secretary she’d “come on” unexpectedly. Dressed in her new denim skirt, with a white cotton top, she checked herself in the mirror. “I should have had the ciggies,” she mused, pummelling a few surplus inches into her bra.
The note for her mother was simple, and truthful, as far as she knew. “Going out with a friend. Back late. Got my key. Love Trude.”
She arrived in Watford early, very early, but decided she might as well wait in the railway refreshment room where they had agreed to meet at seven. For nearly an hour her eyes were glued to the door, terrified she might not recognize him, and every few minutes she refreshed her memory from his photograph even though she knew each feature by heart: Mediterranean tan, chestnut eyes, toothpaste advertisement grin, stylishly short hair, and the unmistakable dimple in the left cheek.
Time clicked by in unison with a huge clock—a curio salvaged from the platform of an abandoned railway station—a tick so intrusive that everything else appeared to be keeping time with its measured pace, including the dumpy waitress whose far-from-sensible stiletto heels tapped in perfect rhythm as she plodded back and forth on the wooden floor. Diners chewed in time to the beat and the timer on the microwave “beeped” synchronously, signifying the successful “zapping” of a limp pasty or sausage roll.
Awareness of someone behind her started as a feeling of unease which she put down to nervousness as she waited for … what? Excitement, pleasure, romance. Love? There’s no one there, she told herself, scratching the back of her neck, unwilling to take her eyes off the door lest Roger should arrive. There’s no one there, she insisted to herself when the feeling intensified, and found herself fighting the desire to turn around.
As the minute hand on the railway clock clunked to 6:55 p.m. she made up her mind and turned suddenly, giving no warning, catching a man at the table behind her. “What are you staring at weirdo?” she spat, nastily.
His head dropped, and concentration puckered his features as he fidgeted with some crumbs on the tablecloth, then he pinched them between thumb and forefinger and arranged them on the rim of his plate.
Trudy, turning the tables, stared at him until his cheeks were as livid as port-wine birth marks, then backed off, thinking: Loser! It was his hair mainly— spiky translucent threads sticking straight out of his scalp without concept of direction or fashion. By the time he looked up Trudy was carefully examining the clock: 6:58 turned into 6:59 with a clunk as she peered anxiously at the door, beginning to wonder if there were perhaps two railway stations in Watford.
“Excuse me,” a voice was saying in her ear. “Are you Trudy?”
Her head shot round and she found herself peering straight into the eyes of the strange-looking man. Her face was twisting into a mask of horror as the door opened and her head whipped back praying it to be Roger. Four people came in, three smartly dressed women in business suits and an older man in a blazer, none of them remotely resembling the five-foot ten, twenty-seven year old she was expecting.
“Who are you?” she enquired, careful not to look.
“Um … Um … I’m Matt. Um … short for Matthew,” he explained slowly, adding nervously, “I’m Roger’s friend.”
“Oh,” was all she managed, thinking