Sweet Sorrow(25)

Under normal circumstances, I’d have found someone to scoff with, but scanning the circle I saw earnest, spellbound faces. Only Lucy Tran met my eye, glaring at me with telekinetic force, talking without words. You do not belong here, she seemed to say, you are behind enemy lines in a stolen uniform, and you will be found out. If I sprinted back to my bike, I could be away in thirty, perhaps twenty seconds, but turning back, I caught a look from Fran. She smiled and for a moment I thought I saw her cross her eyes. I laughed and the next thing I knew we were all on our feet, shaking all the tension from our hands – shake, shake, shake, shake it out – and then the beanbags really began to fly.

We played Catchy-Come-Catch and the Parrot Game. We played Follow My Nose and Scuttlefish and Fruit Bowl. We played Anyone Who? and Orange Orang-utan and Zip, Zap, Zop and Keeper of the Keys, then Chase the Chain and Panic Attack, That’s Not My Hat and Hello Little Doggy and while the others laughed and joked and threw themselves around, I strived for an air of world-weary detachment, like the older brother at a children’s birthday party. A phone number was all I wanted. I even had a pen in my pocket and every now and then it poked me in the groin to remind me. A phone number, and I’d trouble these people no more.

But it’s hard to remain cool through a game of Yes, No, Banana and all too soon we were shaking it out again, shake, shake, shake, and then getting into pairs and pretending to be mirrors. I glanced over to see Fran pairing up with Colin Smart, the palms of their hands pressed together, while in my own mirror, I found a middle-aged man, large, red-nosed and rosy-cheeked like the life-size jolly butcher outside the local shop. ‘Hello, I’m Keith. You’re the mirror.’ He hoisted and shook his tracksuit bottoms to settle the contents as the exercise began. ‘I’m playing Friar Laurence,’ he whispered from the side of his mouth, placing one finger, then another on his nose. I did the same. ‘Because of this, probably …’ He placed one hand on his head, which was bald but with a fringe of hair, the tonsure of a movie monk. I copied. ‘Been drafted in from the Lakeside Players. You seen any Lakeside shows? Fiddler on the Roof? Witness for the Prosecution?’ He let his jaw hang slack and tapped a rhythm on his cheeks, and I did the same. ‘Not sure what I think of all this touchy-feely stuff. At Lakeside, we’d have blocked the first three acts by now. But you’ve got to go with it.’ Our noses were touching now and I could smell the coffee on his breath. ‘Got to keep an open mind, haven’t you?’

‘No talking, please! If you talk, your mirror has to talk!’

Keith slapped his cheeks, tugged his ears, put his fingers up his nose and I thought, why can’t my reflection just stand still? What if she sees me?

‘Okay, get into different pairs, please!’

But she didn’t see me, or even glance my way and instead I was thrown into the next act of enforced intimacy, this time with a boy called Alex: black, very tall, skinny with the world-weary sophistication and maturity of the sixth-former. This exercise was sculptor and model. Alex looked me up and down.

‘I think, Charlie,’ he said, ‘we’re going to get the best results here if I pose you.’

‘Okay.’

‘Don’t resist me.’

‘Sorry.’

‘You’re resisting, you’ve got to bend and stay there.’

‘I’m trying!’

‘You’re pushing back.’

‘Not on purpose. I’m trying not to—’

‘My God, the tension in your neck …’

‘Sorry.’

‘… like knotted rope.’ He probed with his thumbs.

‘Ow!’

‘Am I making you tense?’

‘No.’

‘Then relax!’

‘I’ve just not done a lot of this kind of thing.’

‘No, I got that,’ he said, pinching my calves.

‘Maybe I could be one of those mannequins that just … lies on the floor.’

‘And where’s the fun in that? Besides, I’m the sculptor here. Let it go! Do as I say!’

‘Okay,’ said Ivor, clapping his hands. ‘Sculptors, let’s see your work! Alex and Charlie first.’

They gathered round. I was Eros, tottering on one leg, bow and arrow in hand and able, from the corner of my eye, to see Fran and Helen Beavis both holding their chins, nodding, judging.

‘Ten minutes, everyone! Ten minutes, please!’

In the courtyard, the company gathered round the tea-urn, laughing and joking. In my imagined version of the day, I might have strolled across, said hello and folded into the group, but self-confidence was not a switch that could be thrown and in reality the journey seemed too treacherous and fraught, the distance immense. Perhaps I’d be admitted, perhaps I’d find myself ricocheting off the edge, spinning out into the void. Best to stand here, eyes fixed on the plastic cup of water in my hand.

Standing still brought danger too and so I began to stroll around the edge of the courtyard with my cup, taking in the architecture like a tourist circling a cathedral. In my peripheral vision, I saw someone break off from the group and approach at speed, the older woman who had tutted at me the day before. Now her hand was on my forearm as she grinned widely and alarmingly with neat, white teeth that looked younger than the mouth they occupied, bright, wide eyes and lines like the cracks in an oil painting, the ravages of deep tans and yacht excursions. ‘Hello, mystery man,’ she whispered, her voice low and smoky. She must have been seventy, quite tiny, her white hair cropped and brushed forward, a white, long-sleeved leotard visible under some sort of airy white muslin smock, like the ghost of a yoga instructor. ‘When it comes to the morning biscuits, it’s dog eat dog, I’m afraid. You have to be quick.’