him I was tired of his moods and tired of him shovelling cat food into Blue. I told him I was tired of his friends always being there skinning up, and tired of listening to J. J. Cale. When I tried to leave the flat, he said he’d kill himself. A couple of weeks later, I saw him with his arm round a girl in the Grosvenor Cafe. I half smiled, but he blanked me.
In my second year, I moved up to Glasgow into a student flat. My flatmate Jana was petite and fragile with a sexy, throaty voice and jet black hair that swung like a curtain. She’d grown up in San Francisco. Her mum was half American Indian and had died of breast cancer when Jana was fifteen. (It’s sad, Jana’d say – she was beautiful but she was bi-polar and she was always going on crazy spending sprees, she got us into a lot of debt.) Jana’s dad was Scottish and her granny lived in Anniesland. Jana had stayed with her when she first came to Glasgow. She loved Glasgow. The first time she’d seen well-fired rolls in Greggs’ bakery she’d taken a photo because she thought they were burnt.
Ivan lived in the flat above. He was studying biochemistry and looked a bit like Adam Ant, but taller and more rugged. Everyone fancied him. We would eye each other up in the Reading Room, the dome-shaped library where you went if you just had a couple of hours and didn’t want the palaver of checking into the main library. The Reading Room echoed with suppressed giggles and shuffled papers and books slammed shut. The librarian was stern and wore salmon pink twin-sets. You could feel her eyes stabbing you when you scraped your chair along the ground or dropped your pen and it echoed. Jana called her the salmon spinster and was always getting thrown out for carrying on.
In Week Eight, I got off with Ivan in the union bar to Love Will Tear Us Apart by Joy Division. I said I loved his blue eyes. He said he loved my green eyes. They’re not really green, I said, they’re more grey. When I told him I was from Balloch, he said he’d camped there once and someone had jumped on his tent. It wasn’t me, I said.
You’ll never guess who’s been sleeping in my bed! I said to Jana the next morning. I told her it was Ivan and she screamed and went to check I was telling the truth. She peeked into my bedroom. He was still sleeping.
I wouldn’t mind doing pelvic thrusts with him, she whispered to me back in the kitchen. Bring him to Rocky Horror. It’s on this Friday.
I’ll see, I said. I want to play hard to get. And by the way, we haven’t done pelvic thrusts yet, we just dibbled and dabbled. (Dibbling and dabbling was Jana’s term for nonpenetrative sex.)
I bet he has a beautiful body, she said.
He does, I said. He’s in the university tennis club. And he’s in a band. And he wears contact lenses. He’s as blind as a bat without them.
So if I climbed into bed with him now, he’d just think it was you? she said.
Don’t even think about it, you cheeky wench!
When she’d gone to her class, I took Ivan tea in bed. Nonchalant and shaking, I asked him about Rocky Horror. Sure, green eyes, he said, peering for the cup. It’s a date.
After that we were joined at the hip.
He was mature. He was twenty-one (I was nineteen). He’d taken a year out after school and worked in America. He’d gone to a private school. His parents lived in Dundee in a huge house overlooking the Tay. His dad was a surgeon and his mum was a part-time English teacher from Dublin. The first time I met her she got tipsy and maudlin. She showed me photos of Ivan’s sister Molly who’d been killed in 1975 when she’d tripped up crossing the road in her flip-flops. Don’t ever have children, Helen, she said. You’ll only lose them if you do.
IN SEPTEMBER OF our third year, Jana and I went to study in Caen, a town in the north of France. We’d been looking forward to our year abroad all summer.
I’d been to France twice before. The first time was a school trip to Paris, and we all had to wear red cagoules. A black man with broken yellow teeth and bloodshot eyes had tried to put his hand between my legs in the Eiffel Tower lift. I’d screamed and he’d pulled back, but part of me had felt sorry for him because of the Africans in the street selling trinkets that no one wanted. I’d bought a giant packet of paper hankies from one man. The second time was a couple of days in Nice during an inter-railing trip with Rachel. We’d sunbathed topless and felt cosmopolitan. Two sisters from Inverness had latched onto us because we spoke French, but they wouldn’t take their tops off. They said there might be perverts.
Two weeks before we left for Caen, I had a going away/ passing my driving test party. Nab and Rita went up north for the weekend. It was Nab’s birthday.
I was sexy at the party, I didn’t know it would be for the last time. I could’ve walked out of Bananarama with my fuchsia mini dress, gold fishnet tights, pink shoes from Ravel and black chiffon scarf tied in a bow round my hair, which had been back-combed with half a tub of gel; I had heavy arches of pink eye crayon and fuchsia frenzy lipstick.
Ivan came with his new band and his flatmate Rez. He brought me a Matchbox Mini with a red bow round it.
Jana came with her summer fling, Piedro, a morose Portuguese student with bad teeth. He’s not circumcised, said Jana. Things are a bit baggy down there. It creeps me out.
Rachel turned up on her own. She’d gone to St Andrews to do law. We still had our summer jobs at the Swan Hotel but we were drifting apart. She was in with a posh crowd and had changed the way she talked.
Richard from next door came with his Barbie-doll girlfriend, Clare, who worked in his dad’s carpet shop. She kept giving me cold looks as if she knew that he used to touch my breasts when I was helping him with his calculus.
Callum, who used to sniff glue under Balloch bridge, brought his girlfriend, Roquia, an Asian goth who kept running away from home. Callum was now a photographer with the local paper.
Dribs and drabs of hippies and punks turned up. I recognised some of them from school.
Rita had made Sean promise he wouldn’t drink and made me promise that I would confiscate whatever he did try to drink. His friend brought a quarter bottle of Pernod which he later threw up on the hall carpet. They spent the night shrinking empty crisp packets in the oven – you made badges by putting safety pins on the back of the miniature shrunken bags.
Jana and Piedro had sex in the greenhouse. Jana sat on some bulbs and came back into the house with mud on her white jeans. Shit, my good jeans are ruined, she said. D’you think this’ll come out? That guy Callum’s weird. He was watching us having sex. He had his head pressed up against the glass the whole time. And he had a rose between his teeth.
Don’t mind Callum, I said. He’s harmless. Weird but harmless. Are the bulbs okay? Rita will go mad if you’ve ruined them.
She grinned. I had to re-pot them but they’re fine.
Jana, I hope you’re joking! I said.
Later, I found Callum stoned, lying on top of the coats in Sean’s bedroom. Why did you watch my friends having sex in the greenhouse? I asked.
Och, I was just having a laugh, he said. I couldn’t really see much. It was all steamed up.
Jana said you had a rose between your teeth.
I stole it from next door, he said. It just tempted me. Do you mind?
You’re mad, I said. Where’s Roquia got to?
I think she’s in the huff with me for flirting with Rachel. She’s away chatting up your boyfriend to get me back. He’s a handsome boy, by the way. I could shag him myself. Here, d’you fancy a draw? He handed me a soggy joint.
No thanks. (You could never be sure what Callum was smoking. It was probably mixed with dung or something.)