Summer Fever, page 29
1999
You’re at a house party for Theo’s twenty-first. This is more unusual than it sounds. Hardly anyone throws parties in their actual house, though you had assumed – mainly from novels – that you would be going to them all the time. Theo’s house is not one of those way out in the country, but it is large and laughably grand for a student let. His father bought it cash for his son and his friends to live in while they’re here. It’s in a quiet residential area well away from the narrow streets of Victorian terraces where most of the students rent. You imagine the neighbours are very unhappy.
The house is accidentally minimalist. That is to say that it’s basically empty. In your little house, which you share with Lou and two other girls, there are pictures and photo collages and even a yucca plant. Bastian has come round precisely twice, and on both occasions he commented on this. ‘It’s like a proper place,’ he said, and what he meant was that it felt like a home.
In Theo’s house, where the countryside gang spends most of their time because living ten miles out is actually a massive fucking hassle, there is nothing that is not essential. A huge telly, a sofa, a PlayStation, two ugly armchairs that recline, like Joey and Chandler’s, and a glass coffee-table that will be shattered somewhere between the stripper leaving and you being coaxed into the empty bedroom of a housemate who is away for the weekend, sailing.
But that’s a few hours away yet. There is a banner in the sitting room that’s not usually there. Someone has stuck it with gaffer tape to the high picture rail. It has Greek symbols daubed on it in black marker pen, and you remember that Theo decided to celebrate at home because he wanted a frat party. Bastian has been advising him and someone has managed to track down those red plastic beer cups you always see in American college movies.
The boys – that hardcore of public-school boys for whom Bastian is the exotic mascot – are wearing matching rugby shirts with the same Greek letters embroidered on the breast, and their nicknames on the back. Hip-hop is being played at deafening volume, and when someone’s girlfriend tries to change it, she’s brayed at.
You find the stripper’s performance viscerally awful. You’ve never seen one in real life before. Of course she’s older than in the films. She has a deeply normal body, English-pale, veined and moly. She looks like a mum. She probably is. The whole thing – every single thing about it – is excruciating. How dead-eyed she is as she performs. How dead-eyed Theo is as she lifts his hands to her large, loose breasts. He is performing for the boys who paid for her just as much as the stripper is.
‘This is painful,’ says Lou, in your ear. You turn to her and see she can’t quite focus. Her eyes slide. When she blinks, it takes slightly too long.
‘You’re hammered,’ you say.
‘Something’s got to get me through. Can we go soon? I love you, babe, but I really hate these people.’
You search the room for Bastian. In your peripheral vision, the stripper sprays squirty cream on her chest and grabs Theo’s head, pulling it into her cleavage. The whole room crows their approval as she meets their gaze. Is she bored? Is she cringing? Someone says, loudly, ‘Jesus, she’s so fucking rough,’ and you know she must have heard. You try to imagine what it must be like to do this job in a university town, pushing forty. How she must despise you all.
At some vague juncture, Lou disappears. You assume she’s left you to it and you don’t blame her. You hate it here too, if you’re being absolutely honest. The difference is Bastian. Because of him, you can’t leave. If someone queried this, you would explain that, as his girlfriend, he would be offended if you abandoned his friend’s twenty-first. Of course, it’s also because you don’t really trust him. But, weirdly, it’s not just that you need to keep an eye on him and what he gets up to. It’s the other way round, too. You suspect that if you aren’t right there in his line of vision, you’ll fall cleanly out of his thoughts.
You spend an hour or maybe it’s two in the kitchen with the boys who circle the edges of the core group, like penguins never allowed their turn in the warmth of the huddle. They’re doing shots of tequila, knuckles and worktop sticky with salt and lemon. One boy saws at a greenish lemon with a blunt knife, so ostentatiously drunk and clumsy that he’s probably stone-cold sober.
Someone has thrown up and has clearly tried but failed to wash it all out of the weave of his jumper, the mingled stink of vomit and damp dog making you cover your nose. But, still, when they beckon you over to join in, you do. You have this weird conviction that if his friends approve of you, even the try-hard ones, your stock will rise. And if they want you, and there is one who always stares at you through disarmingly long eyelashes, then even better.
By the time you go back through to the living room, the numbers have thinned. The hired disco ball tracks dismally over the ruined carpet and shattered coffee-table. From the kitchen you’d heard it break: the crash and the cheers that followed. Proof of a great party. No one cares that it will cost money to buy a new one because there is always more money. And if anyone did care they would keep it quiet, for fear of showing themselves up to be … what? A pov? A chav? Hopelessly bourgeois? You’re never quite sure.
The cleverer rich kids read Bret Easton Ellis’s Absolute Zero and think it’s genius because it’s about the New York equivalents of themselves. All that cash and coke and still not happy! Poor babies, says Lou, chucking her copy at the wall. She’s got this gruff northern accent she puts on, usually to horrify Sloaney boys who’ve sidled over to chat her up. What a load of soft shite. Bloody idiots don’t know they’re born.
The thought of Lou makes you smile. For a moment, you picture yourself simply walking out. It would take about thirty-five minutes to get home and yet again you’re wearing stupid heels but it would probably be quite nice, the evening warm, this part of town quiet enough to hear the foxes and wood pigeons and the susurration of the M5 in the distance.
Maybe you would have done it but then Bastian is there, one arm looped round your head to cover both your eyes, the other round your waist and dragging you backwards. You breathe in the Dior aftershave you bought him at great cost from the department store in town and pretend to struggle as he pulls you up the narrow servants’ stairs at the very back of the sprawling house, where no one else is.
The door shuts at the same instant the arms release you but as you turn to face him his mouth is already on yours, his hand kneading your left breast hard, which hurts because your period is due in four days.
‘Bastian, hang on,’ you say into his mouth, which is somehow both wet and slack, and bone-hard at the same time.
He doesn’t answer but his fingers are at the waistband of your black trousers, fumbling for the button. It’s stiff and you can’t quite bring yourself to help him but anyway they’re so low on your hips that he gives up and starts tugging them down without undoing them.
‘I said hang on,’ you say, irritation creeping into your voice because this is so far from how you want it, and whatever else is difficult about being with Bastian, at least he’s usually good at this stuff. ‘You’re going to rip them.’
But he continues as though you haven’t spoken, breathing so hard into your neck that it’s wet there. His hand continues to push down the narrow gap between the tight, still-zipped trousers and your flesh.
You turn your head away from his mouth as he starts to kiss you again. Your eyes have adjusted by now and it’s then that you notice the dark bulk of a figure in front of the window. Your whole body jolts with the shock of it.
‘There’s someone in here,’ you say, voice pitched high with alarm.
The shadow laughs and the sound of it makes you freeze. Not just in the sense of going still but going cold, too. You know that laugh. It’s Bastian’s.
You shove hard at the person pressing against you and the ‘Fuck’s sake,’ as he loses his balance and crashes to the floor is unmistakably English. And not just English but lazy-mouthed, public-school English. Theo.
You scrabble for the light switch, hand frantically patting along the wall, but you can’t find it. And then Bastian is there instead, his hands reaching for yours, and then moving up to stroke your hair. He reaches down to turn on a desk lamp.
‘Hey, hey,’ he says, ‘calm down.’ You watch his pupils contract. ‘He’s just drunk. It’s his birthday.’
‘What the fuck, Bastian?’ You’re whispering for some reason. ‘He was all over me and you just stood there and watched.’
‘Baby, it’s his birthday. It was only a kiss.’
‘No, it wasn’t. He was forcing his hand down …’ You stop. ‘Did you plan this? Did you tell him he could have me?’
He puts his head on one side, mouth turning up into a little smirk. ‘Come on, you said you were up for it.’
‘What?’
‘We talked about it. I know you remember. It was in my room that time. You said you’d be up for a threesome but it would have to be two guys, not you and another girl.’
You open your mouth to speak but a sob threatens to come out instead. You close it again as Bastian leads you over to the bed.
‘Here, sit down next to me.’
You allow yourself to be pulled down beside him. You desperately want things to be OK again. He holds your hand between his. They’re warm. One of his thumbs rubs at yours.
Theo has got to his feet. He comes to sit on your other side.
‘Sorry, Laura. I’m so fucking drunk.’
He starts laughing and Bastian joins in.
‘Don’t you remember talking about it?’ Bastian says, when Theo has quietened down.
‘Yeah, but …’
‘You said there was a night back at home when you were kissing these two different guys, going from one to the other, and it was a turn-on because they both wanted you.’
You think back to this. You’d been lying on Bastian’s bed and you were feeling in charge for once. You’d told him this story, which was partly true, though you’d made it sound way sexier than it was, when in fact it was only your sixth-form leavers’ ball and everyone was totally drunk and kissing anything that moved. It had been friendly, really, a kind of mutual affection for these people you’d known since you were eleven and might not see again, once all of you were scattered, like seeds, across the country. There had been very little that was sexual in it.
Not like this, now. The two boys sitting either side of you are actually men. Bastian’s hand is on your thigh and Theo has peeled down the narrow strap of your vest top to kiss your shoulder.
‘Isn’t she amazing?’ says Bastian. ‘I told her, she’s one of the Great Ones. I knew as soon as I saw her.’
‘Yeah.’ Theo’s mouth is still on her, and the word vibrates through her.
‘Kiss him for me,’ Bastian murmurs, into your ear. ‘It’ll get me hard to watch you.’
‘Don’t you mind?’ you say, too late realizing that it sounds like this is the only thing stopping you.
‘Sure I would, if I wasn’t here, if you were with some stranger, but this is different. This is you doing something for me.’
He begins kissing you properly, and it’s so different – so much better – than with Theo, that your body half responds. You twist round towards him and away from Theo, in an attempt to shut out the latter. You’re hoping he’ll get bored and give up, stumble back out into the remnants of his own party.
But he doesn’t. He gets his hands under the hem of your top at the back and pushes it up. You wriggle away but he’s trying to lift it over your head, and Bastian is holding up your arms to help. You don’t know why you let them other than some bleary sense that it’s so much easier than telling them to stop. Anyway, maybe you like it. Or maybe you will soon. Maybe you should like it.
‘You’re so cool, Laura,’ Theo is saying. His breath is hot on the back of your neck. Bastian’s tongue is in your mouth. ‘I said so, to Seb, when he first pulled you. I said you were kind of naturally sexy and cool. Like, not a slag but not up-tight either.’
He reaches round for your hand and puts it on his crotch. ‘See what you’ve done to me.’
Bastian’s hand is in your underwear now. Somehow he has undone the stubborn button and the zip of your trousers without you realizing.
‘You’re really wet,’ he says, though you’re pretty sure you’re not.
As the two of them crawl over you with their hands and mouths, you ask yourself again whether you’re aroused. You honestly don’t know. You can’t separate any of the strands out. There’s the straightforward turned-on that men seem to feel so easily, and then there’s the arousal that’s at a remove and which comes from the power of your effect on someone else. And then there’s the turned-on you tell yourself to be because it means you’re uninhibited and sophisticated. Perhaps you’re all of them. Or none.
You’re all lying down now and, for some reason, you start thinking about the boy whose duvet it is. Theo will tell him about this when he gets back from his weekend away. Mate. You might want to wash your bedding. They will laugh.
Your total conviction that Theo will do this makes you sit up. You don’t feel drunk but you’ve had so much tequila and vodka over the course of the evening that you must be.
‘Hey, what now?’ Bastian says, and the impatient catch in his voice is just what you need to scoot to the end of the bed and stand up. Your bra is still looped over your shoulders though Theo has managed to undo the fastening. Bastian, so much more adept, has taken off your trousers and your knickers and you grab them now, pulling them back on.
‘OK, fine, be boring then,’ he says, voice expressionless. You don’t reply. Theo, judging by his breathing, is close to passing out.
Now that you’re preparing to leave, you’re deft and definite about it. As you dress, you’re working things out, assessing the damage. You let them take your clothes off while they kept theirs on. You let both of them put their fingers inside you. On the plus side, you didn’t let them have full sex with you. You pushed Theo’s head away when he tried to go down on you. It’s not too bad.
It’s only as you look around for the door, disoriented in the unfamiliar room, that you notice the red light. It’s only a tiny detail among everything else that’s whirring and circling in your head. A stand-by light from a stereo or a TV, you assume, in as much as you think about it at all.
In fact, you’re not far off. It’s a video camera, which Theo bought on a whim for eight hundred pounds, in order to film his birthday party.
You never see the footage. ‘There wasn’t much to see anyway’, says Lou, who had gone round to Theo’s and, after watching it, had destroyed it, pulling out the spool of film with a hair-grip until it was a two-metre-long tangle of torn plastic yarn on Theo’s living-room floor. ‘There was hardly any light so it was really grainy.’
‘Do you promise?’
‘I promise. You could barely even tell it was you.’
‘What if there are copies?’
‘Then I’ll do this to them, too,’ she says. She reaches into her pocket and pulls out the ball of tape, holds it towards you. ‘But there aren’t any. Theo swore to me. I said if I heard even a sniff of a rumour about a copy I would go to the police. He’s too fucking stupid to know that the police couldn’t do anything.’
‘Because I let them, you mean.’
Lou shrugs. ‘It’s not your fault. It’s Sebastian’s fault.’
‘What about Theo?’
‘Theo’s a dick, but Sebastian is supposed to be your boyfriend.’
‘I told him I was OK with it.’
‘Did you? At the time, or hypothetically, before you realized he’d actually put you in that position without asking if it was OK?’
‘He goes back to New York on Friday.’
‘Yes, and thank fuck for that.’
‘It wasn’t that bad, really. They were just drunk and messing about. We were all wasted.’
‘So why can’t you bring yourself to leave the house, then?’
When Lou goes up to campus for lectures that you should be attending too, you go to the phone in the hall and dial Bastian’s number. It rings and rings.
You fish out your diary from under the bed, find a biro. You write the date, underline it and pause. You sit like that for a long time. When you put it back, the page is still blank but for the date. Why would you want to write any of that down? Why would anyone?
Day 12 continued
Laura stands. She needs air. There doesn’t seem to be enough of it inside the bedroom. She stumbles down the stairs, Madison calling after her. She doesn’t stop.
At the unlit pool, she grips the balustrade to lean out over the dark valley. And it really is dark, except for the odd farmhouse. She wonders who else is out there, staring into the black and wondering how the night will unfold: false alarm or something cataclysmic.
She turns sharply at a sound behind her. It’s Bastian. Perhaps he thought she meant him to follow her. Perhaps she did. She has no idea.
‘Did you see the lights down there?’ With the villa behind him, he’s no more than a silhouette. A firefly glow makes her startle until she smells cigarette smoke. Mingling with the night air, the combination still reminds her of university, fondly and painfully at once.
‘What happened to your vape?’
‘I wanted the real thing.’
She shivers, wraps her arms round herself. ‘Anyway, what lights?’
‘In Giuseppe’s House. Isn’t that what you call it? Where we …’ He laughs softly.
She goes over to the far end of the pool to peer through the trees. He’s right. There are lights on. She didn’t even know the electricity was still working there. There’s never been any reason to go there at night. She shivers again.
‘Hey, why so worried? The builders must have left them on, that’s all.’
She shakes her head.
