I don’t know how you get over someone as dangerous, tainted and flawed as you
He draws her, that summer. It’s basically all they do – sleep and drink and draw and fuck in the sunshine until there’s nothing left at all.
She’s trying to forget Michael, you see, and Justin’s there (he’s always there), willing to do anything. He throws huge parties at his house, there for anyone, the elite of London and the kids from their school, and it’s drugs and cigarettes and alcohol and a tiny little black dress that she shimmies into in his parlour because she’s told her mum she’s going to Evie’s. Evie pretty much always comes too, of course, but she dances with Zach, and somehow their side of the room always seems so much more in control than hers and Justin’s, even though it’s really just the same.
He fucks her outside in the dark on the terrace, breathless and trying to be quiet, because there are people dancing only a few meters away, and sometimes they get caught, only they’re too hammered to even be embarrassed. Michael would be appalled – for all his air of mystery he’s really astoundingly innocent. Then again, when you’re sixteen and you know what it’s like to be fingered on a crowded dance floor because there’re so many people dancing close together no one can tell, everyone seems innocent.
She always stays over, though, so in the mornings (it’s normally afternoon, actually, by the time they’ve recovered enough to stop throwing up – they always laugh about that, sitting together on the bathroom floor, taking turns to be sick in the toilet) when they’ve returned to bed and they’ve fucked again, though it’s usually slightly closer to what she imagined when she was younger, softer and slower and sweeter, she falls asleep across his chest, and then he draws her.
At first Jayne doesn’t realise that he does it, until she wakes up and sees him sketching. He gradually becomes more open about it the more time they spend together – and they do spend a lot of time together. He sketches everywhere, draws everything; sometimes Evie comes over and they sit sprawled by his lake, and he draws them there too.
There’s one day when she goes over, and for once her mother knows she’s going and is expecting her back, so he picks her up in his astoundingly illegal, ridiculously expensive car. Zach and Evie turn up, too, and they all retreat to the lake, mainly because Justin’s father is rambling furiously through the house and they don’t particularly want to get in the way. Jayne scales the oak in her tiny denim shorts and tank top, climbing until she reaches branches too thin to support her weight, and then she reclines in a fork and throws acorns at the heads of her friends down below.
“Don’t fall,” Zach warns.
“If only you were wearing a skirt!” Justin calls.
Evie lies with her head in Zach’s lap, and Jayne thinks that they seem absurdly happy, considering that she knows Evie likes someone else. But Zach really loves her, you can see it in the way he wraps a blonde curl around his finger and contemplates it as though it’s gold. She feels abruptly jealous, mainly because she knows that however much she likes Justin, and however much she wants Justin and fancies Justin and thinks Justin is beautiful, with his grace and his delicate features and his dark eyes, she doesn’t love Justin, and he doesn’t love her.
(she hasn’t seen Michael all summer, or even Terry. She pretends that she doesn’t miss them, and succeeds most of the time.)
Emma comes over, without Seamus for once, turning up because she’d been to Jayne’s and had been informed by Grace that her friend was here. Justin loves Emma because she’s the only girl to ever resist him, and he treats her like gold dust. Everyone enjoys watching her treat him like a favourite cousin. For some reason he turns her mothering meter up to full power, and that is saying something.
She can see, from her vantage point high in the leaves, perched like a bird, the black charcoal lines taking shape on his pages. They look as though he’s uncovering rather than drawing, flowing like tiny streams; Emma’s profile, Evie’s sandal (and the leg attached), the design on Zach’s t-shirt. Then her, high in the tree. He actually draws her far out on the branch, perched as if to jump, tiny wings sprouting out of her top. A real bird who could just fly away.
She slides down the trunk of the tree, branches scratching at her arms, and jumps to the ground for a few feet up. He looks up at her as she settles herself next to him, hair falling into his eyes, and she pulls the book from his hands, lying back into his lap. She catches Emma’s eye, and she seems almost disapproving; Emma, who has no idea what they do at night. Jayne tries an innocent smile, which is not bought.
“It’s pretty,” she tells him, anyway, holding up the sketch. He leans back against the tree and she can feel him shrug.
“You make it pretty.”
She flushes, and her phone rings (it’s her mother, asking where Justin’s house is – it’s surprisingly hard to find if you’ve never been there, at the end of a long, sweeping driveway), and that’s the end of that compliment.
She waits for her mum in the kitchen, sitting legs dangling on the edge of the marble island in the middle. Emma leaves, pleading housework, or something; she does too much at home, Jayne thinks, with typical selfishness, but lets her go. Zach goes next, but Evie stays, bickering casually with Justin about how little he can cook, and about the state of his bedroom (it’s messy, of course, bed rumpled and curtains still closed, paper strewn everywhere, a huge paint stain on the cream carpet), and about his father, who luckily has retreated into his study. He hates Evie, for some reason that Jayne can’t fathom, considering he’s always been polite to her, and she’s the one his son made love to on his bed, one night when they were a mixture of high and drunk and completely mad on their own rebelliousness. Then again, he doesn’t know about that, which is probably for the best.
Justin’s hand trails over her thigh as he passes towards the fridge, tossing her a bottle of beer; she catches it, mostly through fear that it would smash on the tiles – she hasn’t got used to having a maid and hates someone else cleaning up after her – and pops the top against the side of the island. Evie declines, sensibly.
“Drinking at this time?” she says, almost teasingly. Justin shrugs. He’s pouring himself a finger of vodka and topping it up with lemonade.
“It’s afternoon,” he justifies.
“And your mum’ll be here soon,” she tells Jayne, warningly, giving up on Justin as a lost cause, considering he’s already on spirits. Jayne shrugs.
“I’ll be done by then.”
(she isn’t, but it’s easy enough to pretend it’s Justin’s dad’s, and the vodka looks so much like water that he drinks it in front of her mother and sends Jayne a grin that makes her blush and remember him pressing kisses to the inside of her thighs.)
Her mother engages his father (brought down by the ringing of the doorbell) in conversation whilst Jayne hunts for her coat (buried, rather unfortunately, under Justin’s duvet) and kisses him hard in the green parlour, standing on tiptoes to reach her arms around his neck and bring him closer to her. When they re-enter the kitchen, their parents are nicely settled with tea and biscuits. This, thinks Jayne, feeling Justin tense next to her, is the problem; there’s no way her mother would believe anything about Justin’s father, because he’s so damn charming to everyone over the age of twenty five.
“Shall we go, mum?” she asks, as Justin runs a hand through his (slightly rumpled by her hands) hair, a sign of nerves. She feels a spasm of guilt that she’s leaving him here, and also a spasm of fear for him.
“Another five minutes, dear,” her mother replies. “Charles -” dear lord, they’re on a first name basis... “- was just telling me about his tea with Diana!”
“A much recycled story,” Justin says, with a slightly shaky grin, and she grabs his hand and tugs him towards the door.
“Call me, then,” Jayne says, and her eyes flick over Justin’s father as she pulls his son from the room before he can says something stupid.
They sit in the parlour, or lie on the couch, in fact, for much longer than five minutes. Time trickles on until, with a huff, Justin pulls her down to him so they’re lying parallel, their legs entwined, and, running a hand through her hair, rests his forehead on her collarbone. She drops a kiss onto the top of his head and feels him yawn.
“It’s fine,” she says, unsure of what she’s talking about, and they stay like that until her mother comes in and finds them. And for once, Jayne’s glad it’s clear they’re only sleeping.
