‘Er,’ she begins, ‘hi?’
‘It’s my mum,’ Scarlett begins. ‘She said if I didn’t come back she was going to send me to live with my grandma. So she made a call and here I am.’
Tallulah shuffles slightly on the spot. It’s a bitterly cold morning and there are spots of freezing rain in the air that sting where they hit the skin on the backs of her hands. She shoves them into the pockets of her coat and says, ‘Sorry I didn’t reply to anything.’
Scarlett shrugs but doesn’t respond.
‘It’s Zach. You know. He’s always there.’
‘You could have come on Sunday. When he does his football.’
Scarlett sounds brittle, less of her usual bluster and volume.
‘He’s still cross about that Friday night.’ Tallulah hates the sound of the words on her lips. They make her sound so pathetic.
‘Who cares?’ Scarlett responds. ‘Who cares what Zach thinks? You’re eighteen, Tallulah. You’re not an old married woman. Just tell him that you don’t care. Tell him to fuck himself.’
‘I can’t.’
‘Why not? What do you think would happen?’
‘Nothing,’ she says, thinking of the feel of his fists around her wrists, the way he tugs on her hair just a little too hard sometimes. ‘Nothing.’
They walk together towards the college grounds and for a while they are silent. Then Scarlett says, ‘So, what’s the deal with you and me?’
Tallulah glances around, making sure that they are not within earshot of anyone.
‘I don’t know. I—’ She stops and turns to face Scarlett and talks to her in a hushed whisper. ‘I don’t know how I feel about it. I don’t know what to think.’
‘Well, running away from it isn’t going to help you work it out.’
‘I know. I just … I need time. It’s all new to me.’
Scarlett’s face softens. ‘I was lying about my mum, by the way. She didn’t make me come back to college. I asked to come back.’
Tallulah looks at her curiously.
‘I just thought, this way we could hang out. Without, you know, Zach the Ballsack telling you what you can and can’t do.’
Tallulah stifles a laugh.Zach the Ballsack. Then she says, more seriously, ‘I have to go now. I’m already late.’
‘I’ll see you at lunchtime then, maybe, in the canteen? Yeah?’
Tallulah feels the resolve she’s spent the past week building up start to crack and crumble under Scarlett’s bright-eyed assumption that they are going to meet for lunch, that they are going to become something.
‘Scarlett,’ she says as Scarlett turns to go.
‘Yes.’
Tallulah lowers her voice to a whisper. ‘This,’ she says. Gesturing between the two of them with a hand. ‘This is secret, yes? Just us? Nobody else?’
Scarlett nods and puts two fingers to her cheek side by side. ‘Scout’s honour,’ she whispers. ‘You and me. Nobody else.’ Then she moves the fingers down to her mouth and kisses them, before turning them towards Tallulah and blowing on them. She mouths the wordsSee you later, and goes.
For the next few weeks, Tallulah and Scarlett develop a routine of sorts. On Mondays Scarlett’s mum brings her into college on her way to her yoga class at the leisure centre and she and Tallulah meet outside college and walk in together. On Wednesdays and Thursdays Scarlett meets Tallulah at the bus stop in Upfield Common and they take the back seat and they talk and they talk and they talk. At lunchtime sometimes they sit in the canteen, where Tallulah plays the role of Scarlett’s quiet new friend. The others, Mimi, Roo, Jayden and Rocky, talk over her and act as if she isn’t there. She doesn’t blame them as she is trying so very hard not to be noticed or thought of in any way as significant in Scarlett’s life.
On Monday afternoons, when Tallulah and Scarlett both finish early and Zach works late, they meet on the corner of the next road down after classes and go to the funny little tea shop on the high street where all the old ladies go but none of the kids from college, and they order slices of homemade carrot cake and mugs of tea and they sit in a booth right at the back where they can stare into each other’s eyes and fiddle with each other’s hands and grab each other’s legs underneath the table and no one can see, and even if they could see they wouldn’t have anyone to share it with because nobody in the tea shop knows who they are.
And then on Sundays, while Zach is playing football and Scarlett’s mum is at the leisure centre in Manton meeting a friend to go swimming, Tallulah borrows her mum’s bike and cycles through the country lanes with her heart full of anticipation and nerves and excitement and glee, and Scarlett meets her at the door of Dark Place and they stumble upwards, quickly, hotly, madly, to Scarlett’s bedroom and fall on to her bed and Tallulah feels all the things that anchor her down all week long melt away into the golden places where they meet in the middle. They say things into each other’s ears with warm breath and soft lips, they fold themselves together and they block out the world with each other, and afterwards Tallulah doesn’t want to shower, doesn’t want to wash the beautiful stain of Scarlett’s touch off her flesh, so she goes home to her boyfriend and her baby, still smelling of Scarlett’s mouth, Scarlett’s bedding, Scarlett’s old-fashioned French perfume that her aunt gives her every year for her birthday because she once told her she liked it when she was five years old. And nobody notices. Not even Zach who now accepts Tallulah’s new hobby: her Sunday-morning cycle around country lanes, to get fit, to help her lose her baby belly. He thinks what he can smell is the smell of Tallulah’s exercise. He thinks the flush in her cheeks is down to country air.