Author: kathleenjowitt

By dint of not speaking much, they got through the next few days without allowing the atmosphere to contaminate the rest of the household. Peter was counting down the days to the end of term – so, no doubt, was Colette: Sunday (he went to chapel; she went to Wardle Street), Monday (that was all right; that was her heaviest day of lectures); Tuesday (although at some point they were going to have to meet to hand over the vice-presidential duties, damn it); Wednesday (there was no escaping AngthMURC, though he was very late, telling himself that the chapel needed a thorough sort-out after the last Evensong of term); Thursday (and then he had lots of reading to catch up with for his dissertation).

Thursday. Almost Friday: it was getting on for one in the morning. Peter had long since given up on Thomas Aquinas, and was alternating between an aimless wander through Wikipedia links in one browser window, and a ten-page argument about the role of women in the Church on the Stancesternet forums in another. He should, he supposed, go to bed, but he could not quite be bothered. The thought of traipsing upstairs to clean his teeth, and finding a clean pair of pyjamas – any pyjamas, come to that – was exhausting in itself; so he sat there, and clicked, and clicked.

He jumped when he heard a sound – small, scraping, metallic. A key, fumbling for, and turning in, the front door lock. Becky and Colette, back from clubbing. Becky’s attempt to take Colette’s mind off – whatever it was. Peter stood up and stretched the cramp out of his right arm. Better go out and make sure everything was all right.

In the corridor, Colette was leaning heavily on Becky. ‘’m gonna throw – up –’

‘No, you’re not. Not until I can get you upstairs.’

A bitter giggle. ‘Oo-er, missus.’

‘You didn’t throw up in the taxi. I’m very proud of you.’ Becky hoisted Colette’s arm around her shoulder, and they lurched up the stairs together. He could hear her saying, ‘Not on the landing, either.’

Ought he go and help? Becky seemed to have things well in hand; and he did not deal well with people throwing up. He compromised by calling, softly, up the stairs, ‘Need any help, Becky?’

‘If you wouldn’t mind finding a bucket…’ she replied.

A bucket. That was easy enough. He shoved his feet into slippers and went out into the back garden. There was a builder’s bucket out there, last used for dousing the sparklers on Bonfire Night. It would be far easier to clean than the mop bucket, should the worst come to the worst.

By the time he had tipped the slime out, rinsed it under the outside tap, dried it off, and hauled it upstairs, Becky had managed to tidy Colette up and put her into bed. She was standing over her, now, making her drink a pint of water before going to sleep. ‘You’ll thank me in the morning,’ she said.

Colette groaned faintly. Peter handed the bucket to Becky and retired discreetly downstairs. ‘Good night,’ he said, as if everything were perfectly normal.

He sat down on his own bed. He needed to think. This was not normal, not normal at all. Other students went out and got hammered and threw up, but not Colette. She knew when to stop. Other students dyed their hair outrageous colours, but not Colette. Her hair was a perfectly nice colour as it was. Other students – well, no, they didn’t, unless you counted Ali, last year – but nor was it at all like Colette to have thrown herself at him.

He had, he noted in passing, got it bad. A disinterested observer would have said that Colette was looking terrible – no, to be fair, she had looked passable enough when she went out, but she had come home with black circles under her eyes, smudged lipstick, the badly dyed hair falling lank around her face, and miserably unhappy – but he would have asked her out in a heartbeat, had he thought she was remotely interested. (Well, he supposed, she had been, in a way, but he had known then, and knew now, that it was false. He was too proud for that. He knew very well that her interest in him was merely a sign of her unhappiness. That just went to show that there was nothing to hope for there.) He rubbed his eyes. Thinking about her, a furious, longing, tightness spread across his chest, something that was not entirely sexual, but that was more than a friend’s vicarious anger.

‘I love Colette,’ he said to the empty room. It was the first time he had admitted it out loud; which did not make it any the less true, or serious. He loved her grey eyes and her deceptive vagueness; he loved her cynical smile and the way she would pounce on a flaw in an argument and maul it until only the bare bones of the truth were left. She would never love him back; he would never stop loving her. One day, he supposed, he would be grateful to have her simply as his friend – assuming they could be friends, now. One day he would have the grace to pray for that to be the case.

Somebody tapped at his door. ‘You still up?’

‘Becky. Come in.’

She sidled into his room, shivering in her skimpy top and miniskirt, and her hair looking greasy with the raindrops caught in it. ‘Well. That was a disastrous idea. I was trying to take her mind off it all, but I suppose you just take it with you, don’t you?’

Peter forbore to comment on the sense, or otherwise, of Becky’s plan. ‘She’s not herself,’ he said, jerking his head upwards.

‘No.’ Becky shut the door and leaned against it, arms crossed.

‘Do you -‘ he hesitated ‘- have any idea why?’

She nodded. ‘She’s trying,’ she said, with a pomposity that betrayed the fact that she, too, had been drinking a little too much, ‘to get back into the closet. And it’s too small for her. She’s a fucking butterfly. Of course she doesn’t fit back into the chrysalis. And it hurts so much that she’s drinking to stop it hurting.’

‘Why is she even trying?’

Becky gave him a look. ‘Oh, come on. You of all people should know. She’s head over fucking heels in love with fucking Christian Fellowship Lydia. Why you thought it would be a good idea to introduce them in the first place…’

Peter ignored the bait, and the sickening certainty that she was right. ‘Did she tell you that?’

‘No, but it’s obvious. It couldn’t be anyone else; there’s nobody else she’d pretend to be straight for. I’ll tell you something else, too: Lydia knows.’

‘Oh, no.’ Peter was fond of Lydia; he did not want to think that she might be capable of driving Colette to the edge, knowing that she was doing it.

Becky nodded. ‘I can’t make sense of it any other way. Think about it. If, in the ordinary way, you have a crush on someone you see a lot of -‘ her eyes flickered over Peter ‘- and you know it’s not going to go anywhere, for the perfectly reasonable reason that you’re pretty sure the other person isn’t interested, what do you do? You ignore it and hope it goes away. You don’t pretend to be someone completely different, someone who wouldn’t even think of fancying that person in the first place.’

‘That’s what you think she’s doing?’ Peter said, disregarding the too-accurate description of his own approach to things.

‘I’m sure of it. And who would she go that far for? Somebody who was bothered by her not being straight. For obvious reasons, she doesn’t hang around with too many people like that. I mean, even Lydia wasn’t bothered at the beginning, and I know Colette told her straight off, because she told me she had. So if she wasn’t bothered then, why is she bothered now? Because she knows that it’s not general any more, it’s specific, and Colette fancies her. Specifically.’

‘Right.’

‘Somehow Colette’s worked out that Lydia knows – she might even have told her, it’s the sort of bloody stupid thing she’d do in a misguided attempt at being noble – and has freaked out and is trying to undo it all. Of course it’s not working, because that’s the toothpaste you can’t put back in the tube, but you try telling her that.’

It sounded horribly plausible. ‘Shit,’ Peter said. ‘What do we do about it?’

‘Hope she gets over it during the Easter holidays. Otherwise, buggered if I know,’ Becky said. ‘Buggered.’ She nodded morosely a couple of times, and left the room.

‘Are you frustrated, then?’ Becky asked, later, while Georgia was at the bar. There was nobody within earshot; the Lamb and Flag was reliably quiet, even on a shamrock-draped Saturday, and the jukebox was pumping out Britney Spears by way of cover.

Colette stood to feed it another pound. ‘Yes. No. It was a stupid comment. I didn’t mean it.’

Becky narrowed her eyes. ‘You’re not usually the one to suggest going to the pub. And you don’t usually have vodka in your room.’

She queued three songs at random, and did not turn back to face Becky while she spoke. ‘Birthday present. I keep forgetting to buy lemonade to go with it.’

‘Not saving it for a special occasion?’

Colette flopped back into her chair and sighed. ‘There will never be a special occasion. Today’s as good as it’s going to get.’

Becky raised her eyebrows; but Georgia came back just then, and started talking about AngthMURC committee elections, and the conversation moved on. They spoke afterwards of Peter’s prospects of being chosen for ordination, the Fellowship question, whether Liam had in fact been worth the fuss, and end of term deadlines; left when last orders was rung; and meandered home three abreast in the rain.

‘Well,’ Georgia said once they were safely inside, ‘I hope that’s going to do the trick and knock me out, so I’m going to make the most of it and go to bed now.’ Impulsively, she hugged first Becky, then Colette. ‘Thanks, guys. If I ever do anything that stupid again, I’m coming to you.’

‘No worries,’ Becky said; ‘any time. Night.’ Feeling that she had played nursemaid long enough, she turned to Colette. ‘I think I’ll turn in, too. What with three pints of Corbett’s Old Gutrot or whatever it was, I could do with some shut-eye.’

‘Night, then,’ Colette said.

 

Peter came in some time later, exhorting the world to shake it like a Polaroid picture, and found her half way through both the vodka and an obscure 1980s action film, curled on the sofa with all the cushions stacked under her left elbow.

‘Hey,’ he said, gently.

‘Hi.’ She moved a box of cranberry juice from the table to the floor.

‘How’s things?’

She nodded. ‘Yeah. Could be worse. Have a drink?’

He’d had a few, but still. ‘Thanks. What is this film?’

‘Dunno – I’m waiting for an ad break to find out.’ She poured surprisingly tidily. ‘Here you go.’

He sipped delicately at the vodka-and-cranberry – mostly vodka, it seemed. ‘You’re up late.’

She grimaced. ‘Don’t much want to go to bed.’

‘Why not?’ He sat down on the sofa next her.

She drew her knees up – more relaxed, but at the same time more defensive. ‘Turn the lights off: have to think.’

‘Not sleeping?’

‘Not soon enough.’ She leaned her head, experimentally, or so it seemed, on his shoulder.

He patted it awkwardly. ‘You’re not happy.’

She made no answer, but put her hand to his face and pulled his head down to hers in a contorted attempt at a kiss. It was not a particularly good kiss, but he could not help responding. Later, he wished he had paid more attention, but then he was conscious only of horrified enjoyment. ‘Be careful what you wish for,’ he murmured, as Colette abandoned the idea and slipped sideways into his lap.

‘Mm?’

He put his arms carefully around her. For a moment, all he could hear was her breathing, and his own. ‘Oh, Colette,’ he said. ‘Not like this.’

‘It’s the only way it’ll ever happen,’ she said, looking up at him, flushed, bright-eyed.

‘I know. But still.’

He held her, very still, for perhaps ten seconds, then laid a chaste kiss on her forehead. ‘Not like this,’ he said again.

‘Right,’ she said. ‘Yes. I see.’ She sat up, unfolded her legs, and yawned pointedly. ‘In which case I think I’ll go to bed.’

 

She was up before him the next morning. He found her sitting in exactly the same spot and the same attitude as last night, but with clothes replaced by pyjamas, and a cup of tea in her hand. The two sticky glasses still stood on the coffee table.

‘Hello,’ she said bleakly. ‘You were quite right.’

Peter smiled. ‘Damn. I was kind of hoping you wouldn’t have thought better of it.’

‘I would if I could,’ she said. ‘Or I wouldn’t if I could. You know what I mean. You’re so nice; you deserve it.’

‘Let me know if you ever do.’ He bent to pick up the glasses; she reached out impulsively and squeezed his hand.

‘I will. Thank you.’

‘It was nothing.’

‘Precisely,’ Colette responded, with a trace of her usual edge, and Peter knew that it was never going to be quite the same again.