Mum had gone to watch Animal take part in a Battle of the Bands, and it was a relief to have this excuse not to join her. You need some fun, Luce. I hadn’t dared tell her who I was meeting. ‘An old school friend’. Not exactly.
I didn’t want to be kept waiting at the bar, so I lurked in the car park until I was ten minutes late, obsessing about that time we’d met here before, nine years ago.
There was nothing sleek about me then. I stood at the bar with Mrs Wragg’s cousin’s daughter, Minna, drinking Vimto through a straw, wearing a vintagey daisy-patterned dress and a crochet cardigan that made my arms droop.
‘Seriously, you haven’t been here before?’ Minna had spent all day making fun of me and the fact that I’d been eighteen for three months and still hadn’t had an alcoholic drink or a speeding ticket or a kiss. It was starting to get really annoying.
‘No, except in the garden, to play on the swings. A long time ago, of course. Not, like, last week or anything.’
She laughed, spluttering on her Malibu and coke.
‘You want to live a bit, Luce. Back at home, I’d be getting ready to hit the clubs. Couple of Breezers in the bedroom with my girls, music on, makeover time.’
Irritated, I had a go at trying to shock her. ‘I usually spend my Saturday nights skinning up in the van with the local biker crew,’ I said.
It was blatantly untrue. I’d had one toke of a joint, once, a few months back, and disliked the aftertaste so much that I never did it again. Besides, what it did to mum and her friends bored me. Why would I want to spend hours staring vacantly into space or giggling at the cartoon on a fucking crisp packet? No, thanks.
‘What, you’re on drugs?’ she said, wide-eyed, then, ‘Know where we can get some?’
I did, as it happened, but I shrugged and said, ‘Nobody’s holding this week.’
I could tell she was impressed by my knowledge of the terminology, though, and she was appropriately respectful when she asked if I’d mind her going and playing the slots for a bit.
I gave her my permission and watched her making the lights flash and the jingle-jangle until something terrible happened and I nearly ran out of the bar and into the lounge.
Joss Lethbridge walked in, with a contingent of preppy floppy-haired fools. His friends took a table while he came in to order the round. He didn’t seem to notice me at first, and I’d turned my back on him, but half a minute after he pitched up, I heard his voice at my shoulder.
‘Lucy, isn’t it?’
I couldn’t exactly ignore him, much as I wanted to, so I turned around and gave him a stony look.
He’d been twelve the last time I’d seen him. Of course, mum had filled me in, quite unnecessarily, with the saga of his doings and his goings-on and his Eton triumphs and polo-playing prowess, but I had never actually caught a glimpse of him in the eight years that had passed.
He had changed. As a boy, he’d been heavier-set with chubby cheeks and hair that wouldn’t sit neatly on his head. Now, at twenty, he had been chiselled and straightened and stood in front of me sickeningly tall and handsome. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t representative of the vileness within, and I felt sorry for all the girls who would be taken in by it. His eyes were the same, though, huge and dark brown and far too intense for comfort. At any minute, the sadistic smile I remembered would break through the wall of effortless aristo bonhomie and the real Joss would be out of his civilised box.
Worst of all, I knew I was blushing because of the way my skin prickled, and I was blushing because I couldn’t stop thinking about all the times I’d fantasised about him. God, what if he could read minds? What if he could see?
‘Well, I suppose I don’t deserve a smile,’ he said, and there was something in his eyes I’d never seen before. It reminded me of sadness. Perhaps it was.
‘No,’ I agreed.
‘I was a complete shit to you. You should slap my face. Go on.’
He brought his cheek close to mine, so that I had to jerk back to avoid his breath on my skin.
‘And get myself barred? Yeah, right.’
He straightened up.
‘At least let me buy you a drink. As a token of apology, though I owe you much more. What are you drinking?’
I didn’t want to tell him but something about him compelled me, even now.
‘Vimto,’ I admitted, and he burst out laughing.
‘I’m not sure I even know what that is,’ he said. ‘It sounds quite dangerous. Lucy-in-the-Sky-with-Vimto.’
‘It’s a secret blend of fruit juices, herbs and spices,’ I told him, hating myself for getting lured into conversation like this but somehow unable to shut my stupid mouth.