Sofka Zinovieff - Putney

‘I’m getting pretty hot,’ Jane said, wiping her face. ‘I’ll go in now. What about you?’

‘I’ll stay a bit more.’ Daphne was so predictable sometimes, but Jane couldn’t face hanging around watching them play agonised lovebirds.

‘Bring a towel over for Jane, could you?’ Daphne pointed to the towels and Ralph obligingly brought one, holding it for Jane and looking politely to one side – the hypocrite. She covered herself as much as possible – not like subsequent hot-tub evenings, when she and Daphne ran naked around the night garden, bodies pink as boiled prawns, feet dirty from the grass, arms stretched up to the moon like pagans dancing. Daphne could do that for her; lull or lure her into forgetting about her size and her awkwardness, into feeling free and wild. This time, though, Ralph had ruined it. Buoyancy gave way to gravity, as she put on her glasses and picked up her clothes, making sure the white pants she’d folded and hidden under her trousers didn’t show or fall to the ground.

In the bathroom on the first floor, she locked herself in, dropping the towel and examining herself in the mirror: skin flushed, eyes bright as coloured glass, breasts full, legs long. Not so horrible. She cupped her breasts, squeezing them together to create a cleavage. On a shelf above the basin were various bottles she supposed belonged to Ellie. She opened a cream and smoothed it on to her face, then took some perfume and anointed her wrists and earlobes as she’d seen her mother do before an evening out. When she emerged, dressed and wreathed in musk, Liam was coming up the stairs.

‘Was that fun?’

‘What? Oh, yeah, yes the hot tub’s amazing. Are you going to try it?’

‘No, it’s not really Theo’s thing.’ He paused and she could tell he was observing her differently to other times – as if she’d moved up a level by way of a sacred water ritual.

‘I was just going up to Daphne’s room for a bit. Want to come?’ She felt daring. If Daphne could play games, so could she.

‘OK.’ He made it sound casual, his voice high and non-committal, but he was looking intently, sizing her up.

They went up to the top floor, where Daphne’s north-facing room overlooked the garden and the river. Jane resisted the temptation to go to the window and peer past the orange curtains to the shadowy figures at the hot tub. Before she had a chance to change her mind, Liam said, ‘Can I kiss you?’ He took a piece of chewing gum from his mouth and threw it accurately into the wastepaper bin.

‘OK.’

He started gently, his lips to hers, his mouth minty from the gum. Then his tongue met hers and it was like electricity – a circuit of wires connected and creating new energy. He stroked her breasts and pulled her closer, leaning back next to the door that was hung with clothes. She spotted the dress Daphne had stolen from Biba, its broad, horizontal stripes blurring as she removed her glasses. Liam took off his too and flicked the light switch so they were left in darkness. Everything disappeared as they kissed harder and deeper in a hanging jumble of dresses and shirts, which smelled of Daphne. It was almost as though Daphne was there, or as if she had melded with Jane to become one girl. Time evaporated. Trains rumbled past like thunder, making the door tremble and transferring the vibrations to her spine.

Unbearably soon, she heard the thumps of someone pounding up the stairs. Liam pulled back just as the door opened. He turned on the overhead light and Jane spun away, replacing her glasses. So that was it. The moment was gone, crushed by rude light and by Daphne.

‘Oh? Hello.’ Daphne appeared to hardly take in that they were there, let alone that they’d been in the dark. She sounded wretched. Nobody spoke again until Jane went to the record player, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand and blinking with bewildered disappointment.

‘We were just going to put on some music,’ she said dumbly. How was it possible to move from one state to another, like extricating oneself from a car crash, and pretending nothing had happened?

Daphne didn’t say anything. She didn’t ask, ‘Where’s Theo?’ Nor did she appear to spot the glaring evidence of an intrigue, or she would have started teasing with talk of snogging or tonsil hockey. Maybe she didn’t give a shit, thought Jane as she put on Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon . Liam smiled at her appreciatively.

‘Did Ralph leave?’ Jane couldn’t think what else to say.

‘Mm,’ answered Daphne, with a low tremor in her voice as if she might cry.

‘OK, I’m going to find Theo.’ Liam was awkward now, as if he’d been caught hanging around with kids. ‘See you.’

‘OK, see you later,’ Jane said, bereft as someone waving her sweetheart off to war. She didn’t see him after that. The two boys went out for a drink and then Liam went home. Within a day or so they’d left for university.

The girls lay on the floor in Daphne’s room, listening to records and not talking much. Jane thought about Liam, her abdomen still tight with the thrill of what had happened, her skin warm with the secret. When she turned to look, Daphne was crying silently, viscous tears sliding slowly down her cheeks, each drop pausing briefly on her chin before falling to the floor. She wasn’t making a noise or sniffing. A weeping statue.

‘Hey?’ She reached over and gripped her friend’s shoulder. ‘What happened?’

‘I want to die,’ came the reply.

‘Why? What happened?’ Jane repeated, more urgently.

‘There’s no point in anything, in being alive. Ralph’s leaving for America. I hate him.’

‘Then forget about him.’ Her mother used to sing ‘I’m Gonna Wash That Man Right Outa My Hair’ around the house.

‘But I also don’t hate him.’ She looked distraught.

It was years before Jane told Daphne about Liam, and even then she didn’t admit it was her first kiss. Hard to disclose that yet another of Plain Jane’s initiations had been enacted on the stage of Barnabas Road.

They stood before the old house waiting for something to happen. There was an unfamiliar sterility to the place.

‘Probably belongs to a banker now,’ said Daphne. ‘Such a different atmosphere.’ She peered over into the corner of the front garden. ‘Do you remember the sculpture we all made?’

Jane nodded. ‘It was so mysterious and beautiful. I’d never seen anything like it. I couldn’t believe it all came from rubbish out of the river. It was like a heathen god standing in the corner of the garden. Your family was so unusual – such an inspiration.’

‘Maybe our family looked exotic, but it didn’t feel like that on the inside. If you think about it, we were a mess. Even then, before Ellie…’ She didn’t finish the sentence. ‘That’s how I see it now. I always used to think all that freedom was a privilege. That image of us running free, flinging off our clothes, walking barefoot around the streets – like urban Mowgli girls finding our own tracks through the jungle. But now I think of that jungle as dangerous. I didn’t really know what I was doing.’

Jane understood that the other side to the fascinating teenager was the skinny girl who was half-foreign, whose mother was unreliable and often absent and whose father was living out fantasies of the literary life with his pretentious clothes, posh car and young girlfriends. As they looked up at the house, a shadow moved behind the gauze curtains on the first floor. Daphne turned away decisively, as though shaking off the memories, and they set off down the road.

They were inside the park before either of them spoke again, walking along a line of elephantine plane trees by the river. Daphne stopped and leaned against the railings, looking across the water at the luxurious green of the Hurlingham Club on the northern side. Nearer to them, a cormorant balanced on a wooden post, sunning itself, wings splayed like a scrawny eagle atop a totem pole.