Dating Down Read online

  “Tamara,” Mummy snaps, knocking on my bedroom door. “If you want Dave to drive you, you need to leave now.”

  “Okay,” I say, trying to sound like there’s nothing wrong as I finally decide on the silver classic Chanel clutch bag.

  She doesn’t say anything, doesn’t come in to help me get ready even though she promised. I can tell just by the tone of her voice she’s got more important things than me on her mind, and with my stomach turning into a hurricane, I close the wardrobe door, turn round, and freeze when I find myself looking at my reflection in the full-length mirror.

  For the first time in my life, I almost look the part, and twisting from right to left so the skirt of my midnight-blue satin dress fans out, I spot my silver Jimmy Choo skyscraper heels and fall in love with them all over again, before I remember my bedroom is the only place I can enjoy them.

  “Tamara, there’s fashionably late and the other late!”

  Waking from the living nightmare of seeing myself humiliated before the entire school, I run over to my dressing table and pretend to look for a different pair of earrings, stalling for time as I try to figure out what I’m going to do.

  “Tamara, did you hear me?” She strides in, dressed in her black pencil skirt and white silk blouse, her outfit is as severe as her cheekbones, which I’d kill for. “I can’t believe you’re still not ready.”

  “I won’t be long,” I stammer, unable to find a miracle amongst my earrings to save me. “I can’t find anything to go with my dress.”

  “As long as that’s all it is,” she complains. “I really can’t deal with any of your drama tonight!”

  She goes again. She never stays for long, and as the tremors travel from my hands to join the raging hurricane in my belly, I sit down on my four-poster bed, try to come up with some plausible reason why I don’t want to go anymore. Five minutes later I’ve still come up with nothing when Mummy reappears at my door holding a sleek black velvet box.

  “I think this is what you need.”

  As this is the nearest I’ll get to an apology, I go to see what it is, and she opens up the lid to reveal her sapphire necklace and earrings. For a second I can’t even breathe as they sparkle back at me. Never in my life did I ever think she’d lend me something so beautiful. “Are they the ones Daddy gave you for your birthday?”

  She nods and takes them from the case. “Yes, so you better take good care of them.”

  “Oh I will,” I promise, my heart doing a little skip.

  “Then what are you waiting for?” she demands in her complaining voice. “Lift up your hair, or do I have to do everything?”

  Just for once I wish she’d want to spend some time with me instead of all her charity committees, but I always do as I’m told.

  Scooping up my ringlets, she fixes the necklace around my neck. “There,” she says, handing me the matching earrings and taking a step back to look me up and down. “I was right about the Valentino – very slimming.”

  I worked my butt off (well most of it) at that fat camp she sent me to, surviving on liquid lettuce and fruit shakes, and the dress gets the credit for making me look thinner!

  “So, who are you going with?” she asks, sitting down on my sofa and pulling her bored face as she checks her mobile. “Carrie’s brother?”

  Her question brutally reminds me that in an hour’s time, my life’s over, and I’ll be the biggest laughingstock since the Josephine Musgrave laxative incident! “Carrie’s going with her boyfriend Simon,” I reply, the butterflies in my stomach waking again. “I’m going on my own.”

  Mummy shakes her head. “I’ve never been to any dance on my own.”

  “I know.”

  “What about Callum?”

  “Callum and I are just friends.”

  “He’s quite a catch, Tamara, and if you lost a few more pounds –”

  “I KNOW!” I cry, unable to act like I don’t care anymore. “And I don’t need to hear how he’s never going to ask me out because I don’t look like you!”

  “Tamara!”

  For a moment I think she sounds sorry, but I’m just hearing what I want to hear. I’m in this mess because I’m a fat girl who wanted to know what it was like to be pretty, thin, and popular. And even if she wanted to help, she couldn’t, because she’s always been all of those things.

  I grab my purse and go. I haven’t got any choice. If I tell her what really happened, she’ll have me in therapy for the next year; and wishing I had the courage to throw myself from the balcony and put an end to my miserable existence, I run down the stairs into the waiting car and let Dave drive me to my death.

  Saturday 5:30 p.m.

  Gary

  I don’t really remember anything until I’m standing in the alley next to the corner shop, angry horns blaring out from the line of stationary cars only making me more agitated. The last time I lost it like this was the morning of her funeral. See, it’s not all right for me to be upset, because I’m not family. That’s what Val, Grace’s sister, kept ramming down my throat when we were all getting ready for the service. “It’s family only.” Well, if family was so bloody important, where was she when Grace was puking her guts out after chemo?

  I take another swig and stop pacing up and down. I have to stop thinking about her. I can’t go back to how it was before. I might have dragged myself out of the big black hole left by death, but it’s still inside me, and if I’m not careful I’ll be lying at the bottom of it again, trying to sleep the day away because I can’t face shit.

  I finish off the can as a babe in red hot pants slows to check me out. For a moment I’m tempted to hit on her to take my mind off Grace. Red Hot Pants Babe is definitely up for it, but I can’t because I’m stuck babysitting my mate’s kid brother. So I go back into the corner shop and grab some sweets for Jack. When I get home, Jack’s stopped crying and the credits are rolling on his cartoon.

  “Jack?”

  He doesn’t answer. I can’t believe he’s still carrying this on.

  “Jack, I’m not cross anymore.”

  He still doesn’t answer, but it has no effect on me now I’m nicely wasted.

  “Jack, I got you sweets.”

  I open the door, and everything stops. Jack’s sprawled across the sofa, barely conscious in a pool of piss. I grab my mobile but stop before I’ve even pressed the nine because there’s no way the ambulance is going to get through all that traffic.

  I pick him up, wet bedding and everything. “Jack! Jack, can you hear me?”

  He doesn’t answer. I’m not sure he’s even breathing. I’ve got to get moving.

  I run, run all the way to St. Mary’s down the road, through the lines of cars. I run all the way to the hospital, where the doctors whisk Jack away, and in a blur of white jackets, panic, antiseptic, and beeping machines, the questions start.

  “How long has he been like this?” demands one of the nurses.

  “Um,” I stammer as I stare at Jack burning up with a load of tubes sticking out of him. “I got him here as soon as I could.”

  “HOW LONG?” she asks me again, her green eyes all angry. “He must have been in agony.”

  Oh shit, please don’t let him have been like this for long. “What’s wrong with him?”

  “Peritonitis,” she replies.

  I don’t know what that is, but it sounds bad. “Is that serious?”

  “If you’d left it any later, he could have died!”

  I slump against the wall as the guilt slugs me right in the guts. I love Jack. I promised Grace I’d look after him, and now I don’t even know why I left.

  “How did he get the cuts on his hands and feet?” asks another nurse, who looks like my old Gran with her black cropped hair.

  I try to shake the fog from my mind as the tears press down on the backs of my eyes. “He pulled over a bookcase and broke her ornaments. I thought I cleaned it up.”

  They all turn to look at me. “So when did he collapse?”

  I look a
t each of them in turn. If I tell them the truth, they’ll call Social Services for sure. “Not long,” I gasp, my stomach cramping from the stress of lying. “I went out for a quick smoke, and when I got back inside, he was like this.”

  The nurse groans and shakes her head. “Who’s his next of kin?”

  I slump even farther down the wall as I realise she doesn’t believe me. “His brother Bill.”

  “We need to speak to him. Have you got a number?”

  I nod and tell them what it is. I hope Bill kills me, because if he doesn’t, I’m going to kill myself.

  Saturday 6:00 p.m.

  Tammy

  I let out a sigh and sink back further into the sumptuous seats in mummy’s new limo. It feels very big and empty when you’re sitting in here all alone and you’re being driven to the most humiliating death imaginable. I mean, what can possibly be worse than being ridiculed for making up a date? And what’s Mummy going to say when she finds out?

  “Do you want me to turn up the air conditioning, Tamara?” Speaking for the first time, Dave, Mummy’s new chauffeur, makes eye contact with me through the rear-view driver’s mirror.

  “I’m fine, thanks,” I tell him, even though my life’s just come to an end.

  “Thought you’d be all excited,” Dave continues, inching forward another few feet. “Don’t you want to be the belle of the ball?”

  “I’m never the belle, just the wallflower.” It’s a shame Dave isn’t nineteen. I bet he was cute when he was younger. He isn’t bad looking now considering he’s positively ancient. He’s got nice sandy-blond hair, blue eyes, and was in the army until a few months back. That’s why Mummy hired him: driver and bodyguard all in one.

  “I’m a good listener if you want to talk.” Dave smiles. “Your mother talks to me all the time, offloading she calls it.”

  I find myself cringing as I start to imagine Mummy telling Dave about me making up boyfriends as my stomach continues to cramp with the fear. “I don’t think you can help me unless you can turn the clock back twenty-four hours.”

  “Oh, come on, Tamara, nothing can be that bad.”

  “Can’t it?”

  Dave opens his mouth then falls silent and returns to driving the car.

  I should have stayed at home and pretended to be sick. If I’d thought about it sooner, I could have coughed a bit in the salon, pretended to feel faint or something, or better still whilst Carrie and the others were standing there, I could have dashed to the loo and stuck my fingers down my throat – that way they might have believed me when I didn’t show with the non-existent Ralph.

  Terror turning my stomach hollow and sending my pulse into overdrive, I pick up my book and read another two pages of Trudy Kensington – Alone Again. Reading about Trudy usually makes me feel happy, but tonight it only makes me feel even more deflated, because Trudy’s going to end up with Ralph.

  If this book really was about me, it would have been titled Still Alone, Always Alone, Destined to Be Alone, and Oh Yes, Alone and Humiliated. There’s going to be no Ralph and no happy ending for me. I’m just going to have to deal with it. Now all I have to decide is whether to go for public humiliation in front of the whole school now or in two months’ time after the summer holidays are over.

  I’m dragged back to reality by my mobile, which starts to buzz and sing inside my bag. It’s Carrie. I swallow. It’s time to decide what I’m going to do. Heart racing, I play each of the scenarios out in my mind.

  I’ve got no choice. I’m going to have to tell her I’m sick, but then she’s going to know I’m lying, post all kinds of horrible things online, and I’ll probably make myself sick for real! It will be the same if I tell them my non-existent boyfriend dumped me. But if I tell them he couldn’t make it, I might buy myself a couple of weeks to find a boyfriend before they realise I’ve been lying and make my life hell. I like that idea best, far more than running away, killing myself, or the worst scenario of all – going to the stupid dance alone. But what chance do I have of finding love over the summer when I haven’t ever found it?

  “Aren’t you going to answer that?” asks Dave, inching the car forward another few feet before stopping.

  “No.” I choose to ignore the call and return the phone to my bag. It’s going to ring again and again and again till I answer it, but I can’t face them. I can’t face them ever.

  “Tamara, are you all right?”

  My breathing is getting faster and faster, the air heating up so much that I can feel the sweat running down my back. “Dave, let me out!”

  “What, here?” He turns round, bemused. “Why?”

  “I’m going to walk.” The lies are coming easy to me, but they don’t make me feel good, and my heart just pounds even harder against my chest. “I’m going to be late.”

  “Trust me, as soon as we get through the road works, we’ll be fine – I’ll get you there with time to spare.”

  “I want to get out!” I try the door handle, but it won’t open.

  “Tamara, I can’t. I promised your mother –”

  “Dave, I need to go!” I feel like a fox being chased by a pack of hounds, only the dogs are my lies, and they’re catching me up. I try the handle again, and when I can’t open the door, I start to shake it.

  “Tamara, watch the car. Your mother will kill me if anything happens to it!”

  “I’ll smash it to bloody bits if you don’t let me out!” And I mean it, every word of it, my fear knowing no limits.

  “All right, all right.” He pulls over and stops next to the park. “But what do I tell your mother?”

  “Anything you like.”

  “And the dance?”

  “Stuff the dance!” I run out of the car, through the crowds, and into the park, fleeing from my troubles with no idea where I’m going or what I’m going to do.

  Saturday 6:30 p.m.

  Gary

  “How is he?” I ask as Bill comes out of Jack’s room.

  “How do you think he is?”

  “I got him here as quick as I could.” I can’t handle Bill’s bloodshot eyes drilling into me, so I look at my feet.

  “You’d have got him here a whole lot quicker if you’d looked after him like you should have!” Bill clenches and unclenches his fists as he stomps up and down the hospital corridor.

  “How was I supposed to know he had a busted appendix?” I wish he’d just hit me and get it over with. “I’m no bloody doctor.”

  “You’re no bloody human being!” He shoves me so hard in the chest I stumble backwards into the wall. “He’s just a kid.”

  I can’t listen to his pain; I’ve got enough of my own to deal with now I’ve sobered up.

  “Social Services could take him into care for this!” Bill yells, finger stabbing at my chest like the blade he wishes it was.

  “They wouldn’t do that,” I tell him, even though it frightens me too.

  “No?” Bill shouts and continues to give me grief. “You left my kid brother all alone because you wanted to go out and get wasted! Remind you of anyone?”

  I can’t believe he’s comparing me to my old man. “I’m nothing like him,” I shout back, my insides shaking from the rage of being compared to that bastard.

  “Really?” Bill snarls, taking a step forward. “He put you in hospital, just like you did my kid brother. Have you seen Jack?”

  He doesn’t give me any time to explain, not that I know how I could explain it to him. He just grabs me by the neck and drags me into Jack’s room.

  “LOOK AT HIM!”

  I look at Jack lying in an oversized white hospital bed, with tubes sticking in his arms and up his nose. I can’t believe I did that to him, and before I mess up even more, I shrug myself free and head towards the lift.

  “That’s right!” Bill shouts after me. “Bugger off, go down the pub and get wasted!”

  I glance back at Jack. By his bed is the only place I want to be, but the best thing I can do for him and me is to get as far aw
ay from this place as I can. I can’t do this again – I’m still too screwed up from the last time, and if I crack now, we’re finished.

  Saturday 6:35 pm

  Tammy

  Dave’s really sweet. I feel awful running off like that, so I send him a text telling him not to worry and to go home. He texts me right back and says, TY but staying! Then he sends another text two minutes later saying, At Car Park B near pub, will pick u up anytime.

  I stop checking my phone after that because Carrie Hamilton-Smith keeps texting me Where R U? and Call me! and R U Alive? You’d think we were still best friends the way she carries on, but I know the real reason she keeps texting me is because Rachael wants to know where I am so she can make my life an even bigger hell.

  I wish it was dark. If it was dark, I’d be invisible, swallowed up by the shadows. Unfortunately for me, it’s summer, and dressed in a ball gown, sapphires, and Jimmy Choo amongst the joggers and dog walkers, I’m getting more attention than a Hollywood movie star at a red-carpet premiere.

  Unable to take being stared at any longer, I wander along the path to the river where the ducks and geese are sleeping, which isn’t nearly as easy as it looks in these heels, and sit down in the middle of the bench to watch the setting sun. I wish I was at the dance smooching with Callum, even if he is only asking me to be nice. Oh God, if I promise I’ll never tell a lie again as long as I live, please get me out of this mess!

  And that’s when he shows up – him and his fat friend.

  “Hello, luv.”

  I freeze as this guy suddenly sits next to me, all teeth and smiles beneath his black hood.

  “I think you’ve scared her, Smithy,” says his hooded friend, who presses up against my other side and puts his big, sweaty arm around my shoulders. “There’s nothing to be scared of – not yet.”