were an unlikely threesome back then. Jayne with her jolly optimism and round John Lennon-in-the-Yoko phase glasses; Rachel with her morose moodiness, clad in the current season’s must-haves – a walking oxymoron if ever there was one. And Billy. He had been one of those boys whose width hadn’t yet expanded in line with his height. He was already over six feet tall, but his body had looked as if it had been stretched. His jeans were perpetually falling down, not through any desire to be a frontrunner in the fashion stakes, purely through the lack of any discernible body shape. He wore glasses too, but his were thick-rimmed like Buddy Holly, and his hair flicked over his collar, due entirely to the fact that the person who used to drag him to the barbers was no longer around.
He’d been a helpless bystander to his mother’s swift decline. In the space of three months his home had gone to one filled with tantalising odours of dinner and the sound of Italian folk songs from his mother’s native Sicily, to one where only whispering was permitted and the only fragrance was disinfectant and disease. The doctor had said that cancer doesn’t have a smell, but Billy said it did. Before she’d passed away his mum had written him lots of little notes, each one clearly labelled in her neat handwriting, which had started to show signs of shakiness.
For every milestone in his life there was a corresponding envelope and in a fit of grief after returning from the crematorium he’d ripped open all the ones right up until his fortieth. He’d barricaded himself in his bedroom, away from the black-clad relations eating heat-direct-from-the-freezer sausage rolls and the unrelenting sound of their disrespectful chatter. He’d kept hearing little flashes of laughter rise up the stairs, which had made him so angry he’d punched a hole in the partition wall, so he’d moved his poster of Faye from Steps over it so his dad wouldn’t see and try to talk to him about his feelings.
He’d been lying on his back when he’d told Jayne and Rachel this, deliberately looking up at the cloudless sky and not at them so they wouldn’t see a small tear slowly run down his cheek and pool in his ear. But Jayne did.
It was edging towards the end of the summer and the three of them had shunned their usual spot in the park for a little cove between Torquay and Paignton that only the Devonshire locals knew about. They’d bought some crisps and sweet dessert wine that they were drinking from the only plastic cups that the Co-op had in stock,ironically, considering the turn the conversation had taken, with colourful party balloons on them.
Billy had flipped over then so he could see them better. In doing so he had given Jayne a tantalising glimpse of his taut stomach, tanned from a summer mainly wearing just board shorts. Her pulse had quickened, although she hadn’t at the time realised why.
‘Now here’s a question,’ he’d said, ‘Why do you both call your mum Crystal and not Mum?’
Jayne quickly glanced at Rachel to see which one of them was going to respond first. The answer would be the same regardless of which sister spoke, but Jayne knew her version would be less peppered with expletives. Rachel’s eyes were cast down, concentrating on her finger tracing patterns in the sand. ‘Ironically, her name is actually Catherine,’ Jayne said. ‘But she changed it to Crystal when she was a teenager. Catherine the Clairvoyant doesn’t really have the same ring to it, does it?’ Jayne paused. ‘But when we were really young, we were on this beach actually–’
‘On the rare occasion she took us anywhere,’ Rachel had interjected.
‘Yes, on the handful of times we were allowed out of the cellar – Jesus, Rach, it wasn’t that bad! Anyway, we were here, about six or seven years old and there was this bloke she fancied–’
‘Sensing a pattern yet, Billy?’ added Rachel, picking up clumps of sand and letting the small grains cascade gently between her fingers.
Jayne carried on, ‘and one of us shouted ‘Mum’, and she went ape and said that from then on we had to call her Crystal and to say that she was our sister, and our real parents had died in a fire.’
‘Jesus.’ Jayne still remembered how Billy’s eyes had grown wide with disbelief and how the cloak of pity that he’d worn around him ever since they’d known him then extended to include his two new friends too.
That summer was one of Jayne’s favourite memories of adolescence. Actually, if she was completely honest, it was her favourite hands-down. She didn’t have many happy recollections to choose from, so you could argue that it was all relative, but even taking that into the equation, the summer they had met Billy was a game-changer. She and Rachel had always avoided any outside interference from anyone else; they’d never explicitly talked about why they didn’t try to integrate themselves with anyone else at school, or on their road, but they both knew why. Crystal’s inability to relate to children was even more pronounced, if that was possible, if she didn’t share some DNA with them.
Billy’s detour into their lives was a timely reminder that there was life outside of their twindom. But as the cooler evenings started to seep in, Billy’s dad was offered a job with his brother’s brick-laying business in Slough.
Billy had ridden around on his bike the morning of the big move, despite them having said goodbye the evening before. ‘I got this for you,’ he’d mumbled, blushing. He’d held out a red and green friendship bracelet. ‘I thought you might like it. Or not. You don’t have to wear it. Bye.’ He’d turned to go, swinging one leg over his battered BMX.
‘Wait!’ She’d shouted, ‘Um, thanks Bill, it’s really nice. I um, actually got you a book – it’s only second-hand, but you once said that you liked Terry Pratchett and this is his new one. Wait here.’ Jayne had run upstairs to get it from underneath her bed. It had been there for nearly three weeks, still wrapped in the rough, recycled paper bag it came in. She hadn’t known how to cross over into the realm of present-giving-for-no-reason without it seeming odd, so she had carefully stowed it until she had figured out a way to give it to him without simultaneously combusting in mortified embarrassment. She’d bounded back down the stairs, flushed. ‘Here,’ she’d said, thrusting it into his hands.
‘Thanks, Jayne, this is great. I’ll start it in the car now. Um, say bye to Rachel too, and, um, well. Bye.’
He’d looked as though he was going to start peddling and then thought better of it; then he’d quickly leaned over and crushed his mouth onto hers. His tongue had darted frantically into her mouth, then out again, and then he was off, wobbling furiously down the cul-de-sac.
**
They’d suddenly stopped walking and were standing outside a restaurant. Jayne didn’t need to look at its name or see the menu to know that it was Italian. Rows of Chianti bottles with wicker bases and eruptions of hard candle wax lined the windows, and you could glimpse the ubiquitous red-and-white-checked tablecloths beyond. Jayne tuned back into what Billy, Will, and Rachel were discussing. It seemed as though they’d decided that a celebratory drink deserved an upgrade to dinner.
‘This suit?’ asked Will, gesturing to the restaurant. In that moment he could have bought a can of dog food and three plastic spoons and she’d have nodded just as eagerly as she found herself doing now.
It may have been the warmth of the room or more likely the potency of the house wine, but Jayne found herself starting to relax. Having been initially shocked into silence, she was making up for it now, gabbling and prompting, asking and touching. She couldn’t stop touching him, actually couldn’t stop herself. She was peppering every question by gratuitously resting her hand on his forearm, which he, in turn, instinctively flexed a little each time it happened.
Rachel was sitting back in her chair smiling. It had taken her four years to persuade Jayne to cut his friendship bracelet off her wrist, by which time it was all matted and the once-vibrant red and green had faded to a grimy sort of grey. ‘Darling girl, it’s time,’ she’d said, approaching her sister with her nail clippers as they’d sat in Jayne’s room in her hall of residence.