Page 89 of Glitterland
Ten Minutes Later
I was staring at the stained glass insert of Darian’s grandmother’s front door, trying to find both my courage and the sticking place. I didn’t know how long I stood there. I probably looked like a very nervous door-to-door salesman. Or like I was casing the joint. Finally, in a rush of frantic energy that was closer to desperation than bravery, I knocked.
Darian opened the door within seconds. “Ahwight, babes?”
I’d been imagining this moment for months. Well, something like this moment, for in my wildest fantasies it hadn’t taken place in a pensioner’s semi-detached in Brentwood. Through sleepless nights and distracted days, I’d as good as lived every possible scenario: from the one where we fell immediately into a passionate embrace, to the one where he chased me down the garden path with a carving knife.
In none of them had Darian been wearing a Union Jack onesie. I had a vague memory of reading an article inThe Independentabout the sudden and inexplicable popularity of adult romper suits, but I’d never imagined I’d see someone actually wearing one. The Norwegians really did have a lot to answer for.
I stared at him. “You look like the British National Party’s Easter Bunny.”
He cast a proud glance downwards. “It’s well safe, innit?”
“Not the word I was reaching for.”
He smiled, a little uncertain, a little sad, and I realised I’d lost the right to be heedlessly insulting and watch him laugh it off because it would never have occurred to him to look for malice. I thought I knew self-loathing well enough that its barbs had long since lost their sting. But I was wrong. In my absurd visualisations, I’d always been so bound up in imagining Darian’s reactions that I hadn’t thought about my own. It hadn’t even occurred to me I might just want to fall to pieces on his doorstep out of sheer sorrow and regret.
I stood there helpless and speechless until Darian took pity on me. “Didn’t fink I was ever gonna see you again.”
“Didn’t Chloe tell you I was coming?”
He pointed at his swoony quiff. “This don’t ’appen by magic, babes. My ’air would’ve been a right state if she ’adn’t.”
“Wait, you did your hair, but not the…” I pointed at the fashion homicide he was casually perpetrating.
“These fings take time, babes. And if a onesie’s good enough for Cheryl Cole, it’s good enough for me.”
Either Darian was so superlatively beautiful that even a Union Jack onesie couldn’t blight him, or I was so superlatively besotted that I found beauty even in his Union Jack onesie.
Or: I really was insane.
He took a slow, deliberate step back from the doorway, as if I were some kind of wild thing that would turn on him if he wasn’t careful. “D’you wanna come in or summin?”
This had already gone so very awry. There was something a little jarring about his calm when I felt as jangled as a bag of cymbals. Why was he inviting me inside as if I were an old friend paying a casual visit? Shouldn’t he have been yelling at me?
Slamming the door in my face?
“Do…do you mind?”
He shook his head. “Naw. Nan’s out. Gone shopping wif the ghels.”
He stood back to let me past. I was trying so hard to control my breathing, which had gone fast and shallow and terrified, that I somehow managed to trip over the very low, very obvious step. He caught my arm to steady me, warmth flowing from his hand. “Yorite?”
No. Not when his touch woke the memory of a thousand other touches. His hands on my skin. His body under mine. My mouth on his cock. Not when all I suddenly wanted to do was to fall down with him, right there on the paisley-patterned carpet, and never let go. “Yes.”
We went down the hallway into a chintzy, grandmotherish living room. Or, at least, what I’d always imagined a grandmotherish living room would look like. Cosy and cluttered, with overstuffed sofa cushions and unnecessary end tables everywhere. Knickknacks and souvenirs were littered across every available surface, the tacky memoirs of English seaside towns, a porcelain plate propped proudly on a little stand, showing a badly painted map of Ibiza. On the mantelpiece sat a flourishing spider plant overspilling from a misshapen clay pot, clearly made by a child’s loving hands and daubed with the legendWorld[sic]Best Nan. I tried to remember if I had ever presented something like that to my parents. Surely I must have? My mother would sometimes put my report cards on the fridge if I got enough As.
Tucked into the frame of the mirror over the fireplace were cards celebrating long-gone but still cherished occasions, and it was impossible to construct the wallpaper’s pattern behind the pictures and photographs that covered it. It was like watching lifetimes pass before your eyes. There was Nanny Dot on her wedding day, hand in hand with a handsome young man in a soldier’s uniform. There was a teenage Chloe, sunbathing in an extremely small bikini, looking like Humbert Humbert’s dream come true. And Darian, of course. From smiling, pudgy childhood to a visibly unhappy adolescence to his grinning, glittering self.
I understood occasion photographs. There was a family photograph in our hallway. My mother brought us all together for a new one every five years. And I knew a framed copy of my graduation photo was hanging in one of the drawing rooms next to the one of my father shaking hands with Margaret Thatcher.
But these were photographs of nothing. A toddling Darian and a toddling Chloe standing, with slightly shocked expressions, in the snow. A tiny baby Darian cradled in Nanny Dot’s arms. Darian in his school uniform, eating toast. Darian and Nanny Dot at the beach. Darian and Nanny Dot in the garden. Darian and Chloe, dressed to kill, sharing a bottle of champagne in the kitchen. Birthday after birthday after birthday. Christmas after Christmas after Christmas.
I was fascinated. So many meaningless moments. So treasured.
On one wall, surrounded by the smiles of other people, was a dark-haired woman with secrets in her eyes, her abstracted gaze seeking something only she could see beyond the frame of the photograph.
“Is that your mother?” I asked.
