Eighty Days White (2 page)

Dark black against my white skin.

Now I no longer looked like Snow White, which is what both my parents and my relatives had always affectionately called me until I was twelve and had rebelled loudly once and for all against the nickname, and they’d never used it to my face again. I hated Disney movies with a vengeance.

‘It’s beautiful,’ I said, as Jonah dabbed some cream over the area and taped a piece of plastic dressing in place under my eye.

‘I hope you still feel the same in twenty years,’ he answered.

I gathered my things and walked out of the store.

Liana and Nick were both puffing away, standing on the pavement, looking out dreamily towards the seafront.

‘Finished,’ I said.

She looked up at me.

‘
Fuckin’ hell!’
she exploded. ‘You got him to tattoo your face!’ She squeezed her eyes tight to get a closer look. ‘What the fuck have you done, Lily?’

‘I changed my mind,’ I replied. ‘Wanted something different.’

Nick grinned his approval and let out a low whistle.

‘I knew you were a dark horse,’ he added.

‘Jeezussss …’ Liana hissed. ‘I thought we’d agreed we’d have the same.’ She put her leg forward and pointed at the small, brightly coloured butterfly she now sported on the side of her ankle, visible but distorted through the clear protective bandage.

I smiled.

Maybe tomorrow I would have my hair cut. Become the new ‘me’ in earnest. It was already jet black by nature, so at least I wouldn’t need to dye it.

‘You sure are a crazy gal, you know.’

I haven’t always been crazy. In fact, if you asked anyone who knew me before I went to university at Sussex, they might well have described me as dull. Middle-class, professional parents, house with garden and pets, room of my own and all that. It was a happy environment to grow up in, despite the cloistered nature of my existence, and somehow
it wasn’t until I actually left home that I began to question things. Small things at first, then bigger ones. And once the seeds of doubt had been sown in my mind, it all just festered.

When I thought of my mother’s life – the long-suffering parent who packed in her career to bring me into the world and then filled her time with nappies, school runs and pulling weeds from our walled garden – a part of me shriveled in fear. Was this all that life was about? I had a few boyfriends, gave away my cherry at seventeen to a nice boy who meant nothing to me but happened to be around to do the deed and so I played along. The sex was OK, though not great, but I had no doubts that one day it would become better. All along I was aware something was missing. Something important. I just didn’t know what.

You couldn’t even say I was a rebel, because I had no cause. My rebellion had been limited to plastering the walls of my room with posters of classic heavy-metal bands and musicians. Somehow, the fierce images of Alice Cooper and Kiss felt inspiring, though I was aware that even my musical rebellion was a couple of decades out of date, and these days my rock heroes had become ageing and respectable. But mostly I just drifted.

I met Liana on my first day at university. We were sitting at the same table in the student cafeteria, both away from home for the first time and getting our bearings and knowing we didn’t fit in yet. We were two outsiders, cut from the same cloth, though her hair was mousy brown where mine was black, and she was taller and thinner than me. Where my parents had both trained as doctors, her father was a
patent engineer and her mother had once been an air stewardess.

It wasn’t so much the fact that we had the same sort of background that attracted me to her company, but that I saw a wildness in her, a recklessness I aspired to. As if she had broken those unseen chains that were holding us back. We were both studying English Lit and shared several of the same classes, and quickly became inseparable, eventually moving in together a year later into a large flat near Hove that we shared with four others.

Neil was one of them. He was only in his first year and so he came under our wing. We treated him like a younger brother, inoffensive and always present, although Liana once confessed to me that he reminded her of her father, always silently disapproving of her excesses.

It was a Friday afternoon and, together with Liana, Neil and a dozen or so others, our drinking had begun early at the student union bar and quickly moved on to a variety of pubs in town. Liana and I were pacing ourselves – we had a plan to make a whole night of it once we’d lost the others. Neither of us wanted to visit our parents during term time, so, as Liana had put it, we would have the whole weekend to get rid of the hangovers before tutorials and lectures resumed on Monday.

By the time we’d hit the seafront and the Lanes, there were only seven of us left and we wandered in high spirits from bar to bar at a leisurely pace. Liana and I were still relatively sober and amused by the antics of our friends who would be written off in a matter of hours while we still had the whole evening ahead of us.

A few more dropped out after we took a mid-afternoon
pause for fish and chips by the main pier. Further casualties faded from the scene by the time we reached the bar of the Komedia on Gardner Street – Neil was friendly with the staff there and they didn’t mind a bunch of rowdy students sitting in a quiet corner and trying to make each round last as long as possible.

Liana was digging around in her ridiculously oversized tote bag in search of money, swearing under her breath as if the act of doing so would conjure new banknotes out of nowhere.

‘Damn, damn, damn,’ she said. ‘I was sure I had some more cash in here somewhere.’

‘You always do,’ I remarked.

Neil, sitting opposite us, pale and sickly, his tolerance for alcohol still untrained in comparison to ours. His eyes looked glazed and unfocused.

‘I don’t think I can manage another drink,’ he said feebly.

‘Spoilsport,’ Liana muttered while I just smiled.

‘I think I have to go back to the flat,’ Neil said, rising hesitantly from his seat, steadying himself with a hand on the table where our empty glasses lay like a deserted landscape after a battle.

Liana now ignored him and looked around.

‘Where are the other two?’ she asked. ‘What’s their names? Wally and Dasha?’ She’d only just noticed that the science students who’d tagged along with us earlier had now left our midst, and we were the only three left standing. And three was becoming two as Neil prepared to throw in the towel.

‘Finally. Just you and me, honey.’ Liana winked at me as Neil’s silhouette retreated through the door that led onto
Gardner Street. ‘We’re still in good shape and the night is still young, my darling Lily.’

‘Actually, I don’t think I can manage a whole night out, even if we could afford it,’ I said, watching Liana rummaging through her bag again. The day’s activities and the glass of lager that I’d been sipping had begun to take their toll.

A beam lit her face as she extracted two fifty-pound notes.

‘I knew it was there. I was sure. My rainy-day money!’

She handed one of the notes to me. ‘Pay me back whenever,’ she said. ‘It’s not really my money and, besides, I’m sure I owe you for last time.’

‘Fifties!’ I exclaimed. ‘Since when do you have that sort of cash?’

‘Dad sent it to me mid-term. He’s obviously feeling guilty about something.’

‘Well, don’t brandish it around like that.’

‘We should put it to a good cause. If not boozing, then at least something worthwhile. What do you think?’

‘Haven’t got a clue,’ I answered. ‘Pity Neil left. I’m sure he’d come up with some idea.’

‘Oh, yes, I’m sure he would,’ Liana said, smiling at me broadly.

‘What do you mean?’ I asked her.

‘Don’t act innocent … Like you hadn’t noticed the way he stares at you all the time?’

I had. But I hadn’t given it much thought until now. Neil was nice, decent-looking but … unexciting.

‘He’s just not my type.’

‘What is your type? Come on,’ Liana quizzed me. ‘You’ll be single all your life at this rate.’

All those now-distant faces from the bedroom posters came rushing back to me. Men with dark make-up, men in black leather and metal studs, wild men. I had left the heavy-metal posters back home and would have attracted ridicule at the flat had I decorated my room here with them all. I opted for discretion. Noting my closed expression, Lily didn’t pursue the subject.

‘Damn,’ she said, brushing her hair back from her forehead. ‘It’s hot in here. Even I’m falling asleep. Wanna go for a walk? We’re bound to stumble across something to do sooner or later.’

‘Suits me,’ I agreed.

Night was falling and there was a nip in the air. Most of the jewellery and antique shops in the Lanes were beginning to close and the crowds were thinning.

We were walking aimlessly along, the stark realisation that there was still a whole evening and night ahead dawning on us and we still had nothing to do when we slowed down across from the tattoo parlour.

‘Hey!’ I said.

‘What?’

‘Remember how we used to talk about getting matching tattoos?’

It had been shortly after we’d met, and we’d been much drunker than today on that occasion, almost a year ago now, and still high on the exhilaration of being away from home and family and the knowledge we’d found we had so much in common. I only vaguely remembered the conversation but, all of a sudden, the idea appealed to me immensely. There was a touch of the perverse about it; it was just
the sort of thing good girls would never do in a month of Sundays.

‘Perfect. Let’s do it,’ Liana said. ‘Do you think we’ve got enough?’ She indicated the crumpled note she had stuck into her skirt pocket.

I had no idea what a tattoo cost.

‘Well, they’ll only be small,’ I shrugged, and stepped towards the shop door.

‘Oh, Lily, this is going to be so exciting,’ Liana giggled.

And now, we’d actually done it.

‘So, ladies, what are you two up to next?’

‘Another celebratory drink, I suppose?’ Liana replied, in good spirits although I knew her ankle must still be burning if the aching on the left side of my face was anything to go by.

‘I hate to be the voice of reason,’ Nick said, leaning forward and brushing a lock of hair back from Liana’s face as though he’d known her for ages. I was beginning to feel like the odd one out, the third wheel all over again, and was tempted to leave the two of them to it and go home to nurse both my jealousy and my new tattoo alone. I worried about Liana though, and what sort of fix she might get herself into next, so I knew that I would be stuck with Nick for as long as Liana let him hang around. ‘But it’s a bad idea to go out drinking when you’ve just had an inking,’ he continued. ‘You need to get it home and wash it. Didn’t you listen to the aftercare instructions?’

‘Course we did,’ Liana replied, taking another drag on her cigarette. ‘We’re not idiots. But surely one little tipple
won’t hurt? It’s Friday night and we’re practically stone-cold sober.’

I remained silent, though I felt like I might well up with tears. I’d been a fool to think that a tattoo would change anything. Different face, but still the same girl with the same life.

‘I live just around the corner. I’m done for the day now and Jonah’s shutting up shop. You could both come home with me and I’ll pour you a glass of something nice. Get some warm water on those tattoos. Make you a coffee. Call you a cab when you need to show your faces to Mummy and Daddy. I don’t envy you that,’ he added, eyeing the now permanent tear below my eye.

‘We don’t live at home,’ I said abruptly.

‘Well then, you are both welcome to stay all night, just to be on the safe side. Wouldn’t want you to risk getting an infection in your eye, after all.’

He was laughing at the obviousness of his own pick-up lines, and I resisted an urge to hit him, though I had to admit that the guy was a looker, especially when he smiled and his full lips pulled open to display a row of even white teeth. He was attractive in a dishevelled, uncaring sort of way, the sort of person who would scoff at Neil’s daily and seemingly futile trips to the gym, but who still managed to maintain a lean body and bulge in his biceps without any effort at all. He looked as though he hadn’t brushed his hair for a week.

‘Come on then.’ Liana held out an arm to each of us, and we linked together and walked the few streets to Nick’s flat on King’s Road.

I stood outside the off-licence on the corner and stared at
the sea lapping against the pier as the two of them bought wine and yet more cigarettes. My phone buzzed in my bag.

Are you OK? Want me to come get You?

Neil had managed to sober up enough to check on us and even offer to pick us up and walk us home. He’d probably been fretting since he got in. He was sweet but smothering, just like my parents.

We’re fine. Staying with friend. Don’t wait up,
I replied, in case we didn’t end up going home at all and Neil freaked out and called the police.

My tattoo still throbbed, and I had a sudden urge to run down to the pier and throw myself off the side, letting the icy-cold water soothe the sting along with the strange funk that had settled over me and permeated my existence, as if one dunk in the sea could wash away all of my eighteen years to date and leave me refreshed and renewed, like a baptism. I had a sudden premonition that tonight would be the first night of the rest of my life.

Little did I know how true that would prove to be.

‘You all right, honey?’ Liana’s voice interrupted my daydreaming. ‘Don’t look so sad. I’m sure your parents will get over it. You don’t see them very often, so it’s not like they’re going to have to look at you every day.’

She burst into peals of laughter and took me by the hand, pulling me along behind Nick around the corner and up to the door of his flat.

‘Christ,’ Liana said when we got inside, walking around the bright expanse of his living room with its large bay window and far-reaching view over the seafront. ‘Not such a struggling artist, after all, eh?’

‘You can thank my parents for this place. You two aren’t the only middle-class rebels in town, believe it or not.’