Page 14 of The Truth About You and Me
We’re both smiling as we return our attention to the screen. Conversation passes easily between us as the film continues, our voices raised above the eighties nostalgia.
‘Is it weird to be nostalgic for a time you weren’t even born in?’ I ask, taking in the lack of phones and social media as the family eat around the table. He looks across Henry at me.
‘I don’t think so… There’s something…’
‘Innocent?’
‘Yes, but it’s more than that, isn’t it? It’s like being nostalgic for a life that can never be yours. I guess there is a sense of safety around wanting something you know you can’t fail at. We’re never going to be teenagers in the eighties.’
There is a vulnerability around his words. What could this ridiculously attractive, intelligent and funny man have failed at?
I recall what he said earlier:Tonight, I’m supposed to be somewhere I didn’t want to be, surrounded by people I didn’t want to talk to. I do, however, very much like talking to you.
‘I get that,’ he says, attention back on the scene playing out where Keith is rebelling about his father’s pressure for him to go to college.
School is hard enough, but by the time I was seven, I had already been to more schools than I could count. My uniforms were often second-hand, and I would be told that I looked nice and smart, while hearing the opposite.
I would try to fit in with friendship groups and they would smile and laugh at something I had said, while thinking that I was weird.
My first school disco was when I was six. One of the older girls in the group home let me use her make-up and lent me a dress. It was bright blue, but two sizes too big, so I had used the belt I wore to keep my school trousers from falling down. I tried to disguise it by wrapping tinfoil around the leather. Looking back, I’m sure I must have looked a right sight, but I had perfume and make-up on, red shiny lips, silver belt, and I’d pinned two heart-shaped badges on my shoes to try and hide that they were my school ones.
‘You look amazing!’
Oh bless her, poor thing.
‘Where did you get those shoes? They’re super cute!’
Oh. My. God.
Does she really think we can’t tell they’re her tatty school ones?
‘You smell so nice!’
She smells like Mum’s disinfectant.
But then a year later, Hellie took me in, and the next school disco I went to, I had a whole new outfit on. It was a white dress with daisies on and my feet were slipped into sunshine-yellow sandals. Not a scrap of tinfoil to be seen. Tess and I had danced the Macarena and Cha-Cha Slide together.
Jack slurps the last of his drink, with a grimace, apologising.
‘Your parents put you under pressure?’ I ask.
He shakes his head.
‘No. I put myself under that pressure.’
‘Why?’
‘I guess, I didn’t want to let them down. My brother and sister were head girl, head boy, captain of the football team, and I, well, I wasn’t.’
‘Did they care? Your parents?’
He laughs and shakes his head. ‘No. Not really.’
‘So why put that pressure on yourself?’
‘I didn’t want to fail.’ There is that word again, ‘fail’. ‘How about you?’ he asks, smoothing over the unspoken conversation.
‘Zeroexpectations. Oh, here’s my favourite scene.’ I shift my legs so that the hole in my fishnets, is facing away from Jack. I’m suddenly very aware of Jack’s presence as the music builds up and they begin kissing. I keep my eyes fixed on the screen and try to ignore the thoughts rushing through my mind of what it would feel like for him to kiss me like that, to have that kind of connection.
