‘I see you.’ Malachi smiled.
As they came out of the café, back into the real world, Pamela felt cautious again. ‘Do you mind if we walk back separately?’ she asked.
‘But we’re going to the same place.’
‘You met my dad – he’s quite strict about who I hang out with. He doesn’t really let me see boys.’
The word ‘see’ almost implied that she thought they had started a relationship.
‘I understand.’
How could this work? Could she really see him again? She wanted to. But there were lots of things she wanted to do but wasn’t allowed.
‘I don’t really have time to, you know … do stuff outside of school and sport. My timetable is quite packed.’
He straightened up and rubbed his face.
School and sport, that’s all her life was. Surely she could take the risk of having something else going on?
‘My dad wants me to go swimming every Tuesday and Thursday between six and eight. But I hate swimming.’
‘So what are you saying?’
‘That I’m free every Tuesday and Thursday between six and eight.’
He nodded. ‘Got it.’
They separated as they reached the field in front of the estate. He sat on a bench and she walked off, trying her best not to keep looking back at him. She pulled her hair in front of her face, smelling its mix of chlorine and fried food, and knew she would never set foot in the pool again.
Pamela paces the flat like the caged animal she is, stopping each time to look at the front door. She misses Malachi so much. She doesn’t want to chase him, but he needs to know the truth. That she didn’t want things to end the way they did and hopes they can work out a way to still be together. But first, there’s something else she needs to tell him.
What can she do? She doesn’t want to talk over the phone; he’s always awkward on the phone. Half the time his phone is cut off anyway. But what choice does she have?
She picks up the phone and dials.
Thank God, it rings.
Malachi pulls his books back onto his lap and tries again. He’s behind on his reading and hasn’t even made a start on the essay. There’s no way they will let him have an extension on the deadline again. The tutor won’t understand that he’s behind because he has a broken heart. It’s pathetic.
His eyes hurt and so does his head. Maybe Tristan’s right about the eyesight thing. He can’t concentrate. He sifts through the morning’s post. Junk mail and another bill. Where does all the money go anyway? He’s only just managed to clear the rent arrears and get the phone put back on. The electric bill looks steeper than usual this time, probably because of Tristan’s habit of running the hoover every day and putting on a wash for one or two T-shirts. Their mum never taught them anything about keeping home. They were learning as they went; they didn’t have a choice.
Malachi allows his head to fall back onto the beaten sofa, the plush long gone from previous owners, and puts his hands over his face. There’s got to be an easier way to get by than this.
‘Get it together,’ he says to himself. He wonders if there’s anything he can do to get some cash in. Well, there are things: someone had talked about selling knock-off TVs, and he’d also heard rumblings about single men with British passports being paid for taking part in bogus marriages. But both these things seem to come with a lot of risk. And Malachi has a lot to lose if things go wrong.
There’s no other option; it’s time to call Nan. The last thing he wants to do is stress her, or make her feel like she’s made a bad decision leaving him in charge here, but what choice does he have? He needs to watch the money more closely this month. He wishes he never bought that pair of pink and lilac running shoes for Pamela – they were so expensive. But her old ones were almost worn through and she seemed serious about taking up running again once she recovered from her injury. He wonders if she’s allowed out to run in Portishead. She’s probably not allowed to do anything there. Anyway, after what happened between them Pamela probably threw the trainers off the roof. She must hate him after what he did, how he denied her. It hurts to imagine her feeling this way; it’s so far from how she was at the start, back when she was completely into him. He misses those early days with her, when her dad worked long hours and she had freedom. Back when being in this flat, in his bedroom, felt like they were a million miles off the estate and away from all their problems. They would lie in bed and allow themselves to believe it would all work out, that her dad would relax and let go of whatever his prejudice against Malachi was.
He wishes he could stop thinking about her, stop using his memories of them together as a place to escape to. But how can he? When everything here and now is so challenging, so dull and so lifeless without her? He wants her back, back here in the flat with him, talking to him and making him laugh. He can’t stop thinking about those wintery afternoons; he can’t stop imagining he is there again.
‘It’s so cold. What time does your heating come on?’ Pamela had asked as she came back into the bedroom.
‘It doesn’t.’ He didn’t want to weigh her down with money problems, to soil their time together by talking about a situation he felt was drowning him.
She jumped back in the bed next to him and shivered. ‘Your brother’s home. He didn’t seem too pleased to see me here. Asked if I had permission from my dad to have a sleepover.’
Idiot. Malachi laughed. ‘He’s a wind-up. Ignore him.’
‘He doesn’t like me.’
Malachi was never quite able to work out what his brother’s problem with Pamela was. Especially as Tristan was always going on about Malachi having a girl and now he had one.
‘I try with Tristan. I really do. But he openly yawns every time I speak to him,’ she said. ‘He does it on purpose.’
Malachi stifled a laugh. It did sound like the kind of thing Tristan would do. ‘He’s not used to someone other than himself getting attention, that’s all.’ Malachi put his arm around her and twisted a lock of her hair around his finger.
‘You’re not scared of my dad, are you?’ she asked suddenly.
‘It depends. What did he do to your last boyfriend?’
‘I told you, I’ve not had boyfriends.’ She moved away from him then, as far as the single bed would allow, and he braced himself to hear bad news. ‘But when I first moved to London one of the youth coaches from running club called my house to ask me out.’
‘And?’
‘Well, Dad answered. He went nuts because the coach was twenty-one.’
‘So you do like older guys then?’
She picked up the pillow and hit his shoulder with it. She was constantly trying to play down their age gap, it embarrassed her, but to him it wasn’t an issue, she felt so much older, more mature than most of the girls he met at university.
‘Dad accused the guy of being a predator, almost got him fired. He said if I saw him again he would send me back to Portishead. That’s always the threat,