Girl Meets Boy - Ali Smith [18]
Denise and I write the letters L, E and Z, on the front of Robin Goodman’s jotter, with the black Pentel I have in my pencil case. Or, to be more exact, I write the letters and she draws the arrow pointing at them.
Then we slide the jotter back into the middle of the pile.
When geography class starts, and Horny Geog, which is what we call Miss Horne, the old lady teacher who teaches us it, gives out the jotters, we watch to see Robin Goodman’s response. I am sitting a couple of rows behind her. I see her shoulders tense, then droop.
When I go past her at the end of the period and glance down at the book on her desk I can see that she’s made Denise’s arrow into the trunk of a tree and she’s drawn hundreds of little flowerheads, all around the letters L, E and Z, like the letters are the branches of the tree and they’ve all just come into bloom.)
The same Robin Goodman, ten years later, with her long dark hair and her dark, serious, studious face, is
(oh my God)
right here in my house when I get home. She is sitting on the couch with a cup of tea in front of her. She is reading a book. I am too drunk and dizzy to make out the cover of the book she is reading. I stand in the doorway and hold on to the doorframe.
Hi, she says.
(Oh my God and also my sister is a)
What have you done with my sister? I say.
Your sister’s in the bath, she says.
I sit down. I lean my head back. I feel sick.
(I am sitting in the same room as a)
Robin Goodman leaves the room. When she comes back, she puts something into my hand. It’s a glass. It’s one of my glasses from the cupboard.
Drink that, she says, and I’ll get you another one.
You haven’t changed much, since school, I say. You look exactly the same.
So do you, she says. But some things have changed, thank God. We’re not schoolgirls any more.
Apart from. Your hair. Got longer, I say.
Well, ten years, she says. Something’s got to give.
I went away to unversity, I say. Did you go?
If you mean university, yes, I did, she says.
And you came back, I say.
Just like you, she says.
Do you still play the clarinet? I say.
No, she says.
There’s a silence. I look down. There’s a glass in my hand.
Drink it, she says.
I drink it. It tastes beautiful, of clearness.
That’ll be better, she says.
She takes the empty glass and leaves the room. I hear her in my kitchen. I look down at myself and am surprised to see I’m still wearing the tracksuit I put on after work. I’m not completely sure where I’ve just been. I begin to wonder if I made up the whole evening, if I invented the pub, the curryhouse, the whole thing.
That’s my kitchen you were just in, I say when she comes back through.
I know, she says and sits down in my sitting room.
This is my sitting room, I say.
Yep, she says.
(I am sitting in the same room as a)
She is the kind of person who does not really care what she is wearing or what it looks like. At least she is wearing normal clothes. At least she is not wearing that embarrassing Scottish get-up.
Not wearing your kilt tonight? I say.
Only for special occasions, she says.
My company that I work for, you know, Pure Incorported, is going to take you to court, I say.
They’ll drop the charges, she says.
She doesn’t even look up from her book. I have to look at my hand because it’s covered in the water I’ve spilled on myself. I hold the glass up and look through it. I look at the room through the bit with water in it. Then I look at the same room through the bit with no water in it. Then I drink the water.
Eau Caledonia, I say.
Need another? she says.
(I am sitting in the same room as a)
A lass and a lack, I say.
This pun makes me laugh. It is unlike me to be witty. It is my sister who is the really witty one. I am the one who knows the correct words, the right words for things.
I lean forward.
Tell me what