All week she had been summoning the courage to message him at school to ask about Valentina—silent rehearsals of phrasing and rephrasing in which she tried to balance the desire to know with her more pressing wish not to seem invested in his answer. It had been a waste of energy. They were obviously back together, if indeed they had ever broken up.
But then why, why all the kissing? Alone in her room she flushed, reliving it. He’d been home from school for the weekend and since then they had kissed for nearly two cumulative hours, she had calculated, and all of it initiated by Nathan.
It was true that he had never attempted to approach her in the house, but this had surely been appropriate caution under highly unusual circumstances. If they were going to be boyfriend and girlfriend—and this had been her sustaining and most cherished fantasy from that first fraction of a second, on the roof in Boston—if they were going to be in a serious relationship, then a certain degree of tact would be required of both of them. She had planned it all out.
On Friday he’d already been kicking about in Belsize Park when she’d got off the bus from school, when he usually spent Friday nights at Westminster. They had walked home together through the nature reserve where he had turned and pulled her to him almost in the middle of a sentence, stumbling with her off the path and pressing her up against the broad, rough trunk of an old oak, and on the way out had even held her hand, their fingers interlaced until they’d emerged into the familiarity and exposure of Lawn Road.
And there had been other developments. When it first happened, the night of their return to London, she had fended off his hands as they’d snaked their way beneath her sweater. On Friday in Belsize Wood, she had waited a third and then a fourth beat before pushing him away. The cold of his fingertips had shocked her but there had been something else, too, and though it had begun to rain and the wintry, late-afternoon darkness had long fallen, she had felt a clenching low in her belly, a knot of sudden hunger, and had wanted to let him continue. Even to contemplate it was impossible—it thrilled her that a boy like Nathan would make these attempts but it was impossible to succumb to them. Her first kiss had been only a week ago; it was far too soon for anything further. In any case, she had privately resolved, his hands would go nowhere until he had clarified his position with Valentina. She would have told him of this stipulation had he asked.
It had become clear that Nathan was a two-timing weasel and a liar. Home was now officially and comprehensively unbearable—there would be nowhere to which Gwen could escape except her own room, and even that would be no liberation if Valentina started staying over again. It was not only in the movies, she’d discovered, that headboards banged against walls with rhythmic and unequivocal insistence. Valentina had read Dante in Italian, she was not dyslexic, and she would definitely be accepted to read English at Merton, which was—Gwen had heard it discussed as a fait accompli so often she might scream—what she planned to do after graduating from Westminster. Not hoped. Planned. Gwen did not know who or what Dante was, though she knew it to be the name of a character on an American television drama. Alone in her room, her cheeks flamed. She wanted to open her new polymer modeling clay, a deep indigo that she’d hoped would be perfect for rendering denim, but Valentina’s mere presence made her art feel foolish and for that she hated her more than anything. It was the anchor of her identity without which she was undifferentiated and unremarkable, and it was childish and pointless.
There was a cheery rap, and James’s head appeared round the door.
“Your mom sent me psychic vibes that she wanted me to come and check you were okay. She’d have come herself but she’s busy lacing arsenic into the dinner.”
“Good. Tell her to make it a double dose for me.”
“Not for you. But I think she’s ready to dispatch our little visitor.” James advanced a little into the room and opened the door wider behind him. He always did this when they were alone together, Gwen had noticed with exasperation, shuffling away on sofas and adopting modes of ostentatiously monkish propriety that he had no doubt learned from a book of pop psychology. How Not to Make Your Stepdaughter Think You’re a Perv, Volume I. This was the first time he had ventured alone into her bedroom and so he must have been on high alert. He needn’t have bothered. James did not have it in him to be anything so interesting as a pervert. Of all her objections that, thankfully, was not a concern. His self-conscious behavior merely drew attention to the idea that he could have been an incestuous pedophile, but wasn’t. Still, if he was willing to insult Valentina, he could stay.
“Your son,” Gwen said, with slightly wobbly scorn, “is a total douche.”
“He has it in him,” James conceded. “But I think that particular little nastiness was someone else’s handiwork. I saw his face, I really think he hadn’t seen. Do you want to come back down and show them that you’re a bigger person?”
“Is that some kind of joke?” Gwen demanded, ever attuned to anything that could be construed a reference to her height. “You think I should like, stand on her, or something?”
James looked bewildered and then horrified, briefly. “No! I wouldn’t make personal— No, no. Retake. Do you want to come back down and show them you are a more mature person than she?”
“I’m not. I’m a retard who can’t spell.” Gwen promptly burst into tears. James would never attempt to hug her unchaperoned, and she felt fleeting gratitude for this consideration before sinking back into the partial relief of misery and self-pity. And her mother hadn’t even come up. She’d sent her new proxy, as if she and James were interchangeable. Gwen’s companionship no longer necessary, her requirements no longer paramount. Gwen had no one. James sat down in the open doorway and pulled his knees up, awkwardly.
“You know, nowadays we have spellcheck,” he mused. “I’d say on balance I’d rather be you.”
Gwen shook her head, mute with unhappiness, but just then a message arrived.
Sorry about V. She’s mad because it’s totally over, that was last talk. You’re my girl? xxx
Gwen gave James an unsteady smile that broadened as she reread. She said he could go, thanks. She would be okay.
11.