All About Us. Tom Ellen

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ he seemed to have stepped straight out of Withnail & I, chain-smoking roll-ups in his moth-eaten pea coat. I’d bought one in the exact same style – I can actually see it now, through the gap in my wardrobe.

      By second term, though – once I’d met Daphne – the Marek effect started to wear off. I began to realise that Daff and Harv were much more fun to hang out with. Mainly because when I was with them, I didn’t have to try so hard to be someone I wasn’t.

      Daff shifts round to face me and sits cross-legged on the bed. She’s slipped her shoes off already, and she tucks her stripy-socked feet underneath her. Her curly hair is starting to wriggle free from her ponytail, and as she reaches up to retie it, she pushes her shoulders back and tilts her head, and for a moment, she looks so beautiful I can barely think straight.

      This is just … mad. I mean: this is Daphne. I’ve known her fifteen years. Why the hell am I so nervous?

      I plonk down opposite her, nearly spilling half my tea.

      ‘So, you’ve already got me figured out, then, have you?’ I say.

      ‘Yup.’ She grins. ‘Always late. Reads highly pretentious books. Bad at hiding in mazes. Good at making tea. That about sums you up, I reckon.’

      ‘Oh, great. Thanks a lot.’

      ‘No worries.’ She stretches her leg out and pokes me gently in the thigh with her big toe. It’s a gesture that’s so familiar – so relaxed and comfortable – that I’m suddenly seized by the idea that she knows. That this isn’t 2005 Daphne: it’s 2020 Daphne, and she’s inexplicably jumped back through time, too.

      But as soon as that idea forms, it dissolves. Because the truth is: she was always like this. Right from the start. I remember it even on our first date. I made her laugh at one point, and she reached across and squeezed my hand. She was so intimate; like we’d known each other our whole lives.

      She cranes her neck round to look out of the window, but she doesn’t move her leg away. She just leaves it there, with her foot still resting lightly on my thigh. She can’t possibly know the effect this is having on me – or at least I hope she doesn’t. It’s like a cement mixer has just been switched on in my stomach. All I can think about is leaning forward and taking her in my arms again.

      ‘You got so lucky with your view,’ she murmurs, staring out of my grubby second-floor window. ‘You can see the lake and the ducks and everything. My room looks out onto the bloody staff car park.’

      ‘Trust me, it’s not lucky,’ I say, remembering the racket the ducks used to make. ‘Listen to this lot.’ I lean past her, catching a scent of her perfume as I do, and crack the window open. The sound of hooting and quacking comes floating in, along with a blast of bitingly cold wind. ‘They’re like this all night,’ I say. ‘Honestly, I barely sleep in here.’

      She laughs, her brown eyes twinkling. ‘So that’s why you’re always late for lectures. The ducks.’

      ‘Exactly. Blame the ducks.’

      She glances out of the window again. ‘They’re probably hungry …’

      She jumps up and bolts out of the door. When she comes back in a few seconds later, she’s swinging a half-empty bag of sliced bread. There’s a Post-it note stuck to it that reads: MAREK’S – DO NOT TOUCH. For a self-styled anarcho-communist, Marek always had surprisingly conservative views on food-sharing.

      ‘On a scale of one to ten,’ Daff says, ‘how pissed off will Marek be if we nick two slices of his bread?’

      ‘I’m going to say eleven,’ I tell her. ‘But let’s do it anyway.’

      She drops back down on the bed and hands me a slice. We both poke our heads out of the window into the freezing night air. And as we lean out, shivering, we’re pressed right up against each other, arm to arm, so close that her loose curls are spilling onto my shoulder. We start dropping the bread.

      ‘This is not doing anything for the noise levels,’ I say over the excited honking.

      Daff laughs, and nudges her shoulder into mine. ‘Yeah. Plus it’s absolutely freezing.’ She dusts her hands off and watches as the crumbs rain down. ‘Come on, let’s go back in.’

      We retreat inside and shut the window again. She recrosses her legs, and wraps both hands tightly around her tea mug to warm them up.

      ‘It’s crazy how quickly this first term has gone,’ she says. ‘Before we know it, uni will be over.’ She shakes her head at the idea. ‘We’ll be twenty-one. We’ll be actual adults.’

      ‘We are technically actual adults now, you know,’ I say.

      She gives me a perfectly deadpan look. ‘Ben, we’ve just spent the last hour playing hide-and-seek in a hedge.’

      I laugh. ‘Good point.’

      She takes another sip of tea, and shuffles backwards on the bed until she’s leaning up against the headboard. She stretches her legs out again, and without thinking, I lift her foot back into its previous position on my thigh. If she finds this at all weird or forward, she doesn’t show it. She just smiles at me and says: ‘It’s crazy to think about, though, isn’t it? Once uni’s over, we’ll have no one telling us what to do any more. We’ll actually have to decide what to do with every day of our lives.’

      ‘So what do you want to do with them?’ I ask her.

      She laughs, and wriggles back against the headboard, trying to get comfy. ‘I just want to … be happy, I suppose. Enjoy life. Have good friends. Be a good friend. Do something for a living that I love.’ She pauses for another sip of tea. ‘First up, though, I want to go travelling. Bit clichéd, I know, but when you grow up in a tiny village where you know everyone, the idea of visiting the other side of the world seems quite appealing.’ She shrugs. ‘That’s the plan, anyway. But I bet I never get round to it.’

      ‘I bet you will,’ I say. Because I know she will. She and Jamila will spend five months backpacking around South East Asia and Australia straight after uni, while I work night shifts in a pub in Ealing, missing her like mad.

      It’s crazy to think about that period now. We’d been going out for two and a half years at that point, but it still felt fresh and new and exciting. I was still so caught up in her; so hopelessly head-over-heels. I couldn’t believe that this funny, sexy, incredible girl was actually with me. It’s a feeling that’s starting to sink back in again right now – it has been ever since that kiss in the maze.

      What’s happened to that feeling in 2020? When did it get lost along the way? How did we turn into this bitter, sniping couple, constantly at each other’s throats?

      We sit in silence for a few seconds, at opposite ends of my single bed, just smiling and looking into each other’s eyes. And suddenly it’s like I really am nineteen again, my brain fizzing with the excitement of having met someone this brilliant. Someone I feel an instant, inexplicable connection with.

      Daff yawns and stretches her arms behind her head. The urge to lean forward and kiss her grips me tightly again, but I content myself with another large slurp of tea.

      ‘What are you doing for Christmas, then?’ I ask.

      ‘I’ll СКАЧАТЬ