“Definitely.”
“I’m glad I didn’t, then.” She fetched me a glass of water and I drank it down while she lit up a cigarette. She shoved the ashtray towards me and offered me some, but my stomach turned at the thought of it. Lizzie’s room was spinning a little, but I looked around anyway. She still had loads of posters up, still the same old broken wardrobe door and the tatty old dressing table. I was hardly here, she hardly wanted me here. I don’t think she wanted to be here either. “Mum’s away again. Typical.”
“Maybe we should go to mine…”
She shook her head. “It’s alright, you should get some sleep.”
I forced myself up, until I was sitting upright. “I have to go back out later.”
“You what?”
“I have to, Lizzie. I have to say sorry. Give him his jacket back.”
“That’s ridiculous. He won’t thank you for it.”
I reached for her hand. “Please, Lizzie. Don’t stop me. I have to make this right.”
“You’re trashed. You wouldn’t make it ten yards.”
“I’ll sober up, head over there just before midnight, just before it finishes…”
“You’re crazy!”
“You can watch me up the road, like he watched us.”
“This is crazy talk, Hels.”
“Please.” I squeezed her hand. “Please, Lizzie. It’s important to me. Please.”
She sighed.
“I love him,” I said, and even drunk it sounded pitiful. “I really love him.”
“And he’s really your teacher, and you’re really drunk.”
“If I sober up,” I begged. “Please, Lizzie. Please let me go.”
“You’re eighteen years old, Helen Palmer. It’s up to you how much of an idiot you make of yourself.” She smiled to lighten the words. “I can’t believe you’re still a virgin. Way to go, useless Harry.”
“Harry’s nice. I just don’t want him.”
“You don’t want anyone who isn’t Mr bloody Roberts, Hels.”
I shrugged. “That’s true enough.”
She stubbed out her cigarette and lit another. “Ain’t such a thing as true love, Hels. It’s nothing but fairy tales.”
“You really think that?”
“I really know that. There’s sex, and there’s finding someone who is tolerable to try and goof about the rest of your life with. That’s it.”
“That’s no way it,” I argued. “That’s crazy talk.”
“It’s real talk.” She kicked her heels off. “Be glad that you won’t get to be with Roberts. Enjoy the dream. At least you won’t get disillusioned.”
The thought pained. It poked my broken little heart and made it bleed. “I just… I love him so much.”
“He’d be just another douche like the rest of them.”
“The rest of who?”
“Men,” she said. “Stupid idiot men.”
“Like Scottie?”
She shrugged. “Like Scottie, like all of them.”
I lowered my voice, looked at the door. “Like Ray.”
She took a long drag on her cigarette. “I don’t know what Mum sees in him.”
I didn’t have an answer for that, because I didn’t know either.
She stubbed out her cigarette and flicked off the main light. “If you’re going to be sober enough, you’d better get some rest, Hels Bells. I’ll wake you up before midnight.”
I climbed under the covers and she followed. Only this time she didn’t tie me up or rub me in private places. She wrapped her arms around me and buried her face in my hair and hugged me tight.
“Love you, Hels. Always.”
“And me you,” I said. “Always.”
She was asleep before I was.
***
Lizzie was fast asleep when I crept out, and Ray was, too. I tiptoed through the flat, still feeling sick to the stomach, and my head was woolly, thumping a little. I shut the front door quietly behind me and put on my heels in the corridor. It took me a while to get down the stairs, but I managed it without incident, and the chill from the night air sobered me right up.
I went as quickly as my legs would carry me, sneaking through the Three Friars car park and keeping to the shadows. There weren’t many students left, just the odd huddle smoking outside. I kept my distance, peering through one of the windows at the back of the hall just to make sure he was still in there.
He was. And so was she. Miss pissing Monkton.
I crept back to the main entrance, and positioned myself in the shadows to the side of the car park. I’d catch hold of him here, as he was leaving.
Everyone in the whole universe seemed to leave first, laughing and singing and swaying up the road. I was freezing cold by the time he came out, even wrapped up in his jacket. My knees were knocking and my teeth were chattering.
I was all set to step out when I heard a voice behind him.
“Great night, all in,” Miss Monkton said. “Thanks for all your help.”
“My pleasure.”
“I think everyone had a good time… asides from the dramas…”
“There are always dramas, Jenny.”