Black Diamond

CHAPTER 12

“Two Eggs and Chips coming right up.”

Grace scrawled the order onto the small pad and walked quickly towards the chipped and faded Formica bar, slapping the order down. She glanced at the clock and breathed a sigh of relief as her manager Wendy emerged from the back.

“Take your break. I’ll cover you.”

Grace gave a grateful nod, quickly whipping off her apron as she scrambled to get out of the stuffy diner with its ever-present stench of fried oil. Pulling on her Hennies hooded top, Grace emerged into a sunny day. She pause for a moment and leaned against the wall in the alleyway that ran behind the diner. Eight weeks in and the job had taken its toll. Being constantly on her feet should have helped her shed some pounds but the free greasy food, which she indulged in far too often, meant she’d barely lost any weight at all. They were already in the dying days of August, college would restart soon and she’d not lost a pound. Her health kick had never got started and her skin, always troublesome, was now a mass of blackheads and pimples courtesy of her stint managing the deep fat fryer. Grace sighed. Once again, it seemed that the summer when she would emerge a swan would have to be pushed back.

Pushing away from the wall, Grace started towards the busy street market a few minutes from the diner. On the plus side, she thought, at least she had completed all her reading for next term’s subjects. When she hadn’t been working she’d made sure to stick to the library, anything to keep out of The Pastor’s way. On the busy market street, Grace hovered for a moment unsure of what to do. Her eyes darted past a small coffee shop and her gaze stopped on the fruit and veg seller at the edge of the market. With a decisive nod, Grace made her way towards that stall; she would have a healthy lunch. Grace appraised the fruit and winced at the handwritten prices. That was another reason why she ate so badly, healthy food was never cheap.

“What can I get you, love?” Grace glanced up into the smiling face of the fruit seller, who greeted her every morning as she walked by. He was in his mid-fifties she judged and had the look of someone who could sell snow to an Inuit.

“Just some plums and two bananas, please.” The grocer nodded and began picking Grace’s fruit just as there was a sound of rustling and crashing from a covered area behind the stall. The smiling grocer glanced around calling out.

“Don’t mess up all my boxes down there. Just stack them properly.” Turning back to Grace, the grocer shook his head with a smile. “My nephew. You can’t get the staff these days.” Grace smiled, watching as he weighed her order. “You work round here?” he asked.

“Just at the diner,” Grace replied with a smile, watching as he deftly bagged up her fruit.

“£2.30 please.” As Grace counted the money out of her purse, the fruit vendor spoke again, nodding at the emblem on Grace’s hooded jumper.

“Lady Henrietta, you at college then?”

“University,” Grace replied, wishing he’d hurry up, her lunch hour was ticking away.

“Which uni?” he asked. Grace blushed as she always did when asked this question. The responses always embarrassed her, ranging from incredulity, to disproportionate pride and congratulations and occasionally, too, censure as though she had somehow sold out.

“Oxford,” Grace said quietly.

“Oxford, really. Good for you. One of our lads is up there.” Grace looked up surprised at the response; she had not expected that.

“Really?” she asked her curiosity piqued.

“Yeah, hang on.”

Grace watched as the seller turned around, shouting into the back of the stall.

“Oi, Monkey, get out here.” There was more rustling and banging as the grocer spoke. “My nephew, he’s up at Oxford too.”

Grace watched as a tall, smiling young man emerged, coming forward towards them. He looked first at his uncle and then he turned to Grace and the smile died on his face.

And suddenly Grace felt as though she had somehow stepped off the edge of the world as she stared into the eyes of Matt.

Three days later and he was back at the diner again.

Grace took a deep breath and looked away from Matt and continued wiping down a table. In just ten minutes her shift would be over and she would be able to do what she’d done every day these last three days. Slip out of the back and rush home, thereby avoiding Matt. Grace breathed a sigh of relief as the clock hit 7 p.m. and she headed out the back. In the locker room, she unclipped her apron and pulled on her cardigan. Even days later, she struggled to understand the revelations. Matt. One of The Gatsbies, except he wasn’t. Wasn’t rich. Wasn’t posh. He was like her from inner London, the son of a pub landlord, nephew of a market stall trader. He was just like her; they should have been allies. Except he wasn’t like her, he was white and that meant he could pass, with just the right adjustments to his accent, his attitude, he could pretend to be one of them.

The evening was cool as Grace stepped out into the alleyway and she pulled her cardigan closed and gasped. Matt stood waiting for her. For a moment, Grace froze and then she kept her head down and ploughed forward. She hoped he would move. He didn’t.

“Can you get out of my way, please.”

“We need to talk,” Matt said, his voice little more than a whisper.

“There’s nothing to say.” Grace sidestepped him. She felt his hand rise as though to prevent her passing him but then it dropped back down to his side.

“Grace, please.” Unable to stop herself her eyes rose to his face and that was her mistake. Matt looked worn and tired and there were dark circles under his eyes. He looked desperate and utterly unlike her confident defender from Oxford. And Grace knew then that he had her. Slowly she turned around to fully face him.

“What do you want from me?”

“What you saw, who I am…” Matt began.

“What about it?” Grace cut, in striving to hold onto the coldness that had settled in her heart.

“They can’t find out. None of them can know.”

“Who? The Gatsbies?” Matt winced as she uttered the name and made real his fears.

“You know what they’re like at Newman. Someone assumed and I just went with it.”

“Lucky you,” Grace snapped bitterly even as a small part of her applauded his audacity. He’d played The Gatsbies, was still playing them.

“I just need to keep it up, till graduation, get a good job, use the connections… What’s so wrong with that?”

“It’s one hell of a secret,” Grace said slowly.

“Please don’t say anything,” Matt continued. Grace heard the pleading note in his voice. She saw the fear in his eyes and suddenly something shifted. For the first time in her life Grace felt the thrill of power.

For the last three weeks of the summer Grace had nursed the secret like a precious stone. In the day, she forced it to the back of her mind, waited her tables, ran the gauntlet of the market nodding at Matt’s uncle. Sometimes, she would see Matt watching, fear and desperation still etched on his face. He was still waiting for her answer. Only at night, long after another tense dinner with The Pastor and her mother, only in the dark in her stuffy bedroom would she take the secret out, exposing it to the light of her scrutiny.

The more she thought about it, the more Grace marvelled. Matt must be smart, really clever to have sustained his double life, to have been able to convince The Gatsbies. Another fact filled Grace with a frisson of excitement – only she knew Matt’s secret. In the moment before she closed her eyes, Grace smiled at the realisation that for once, she had something that Poppy or Laura did not have. For now at least, she had the real Matt.

“What are we going to do?” Matt asked nervously. He’d looked surprised to see Grace lurking outside the pub on a Sunday morning.

“What do you want me to do?” Grace asked, meeting Matt’s gaze head on. She no longer shied away from his gaze, no longer felt embarrassed to let him see her staring, that was the thing about power. Suddenly, for the first time power had shifted into her hands and it made Grace feel something that she had never felt before, it made her feel almost fearless.

“Just don’t say anything, don’t throw me to the wolves…” Grace shook her head, weighing up her words, leaving Matt hanging.

“You’ve been hanging with The Gatsbies for too long,” she finally said. “Why would I expose you?” Grace saw the relief flood through Matt. She saw the tension drain from him and his shoulders sagged.

“You promise?” he asked.

“’Course,” Grace replied. “I like knowing something that none of those bitches will ever know.”

“I swear if there’s any way I can ever help you…” Matt trailed off. “Thank you,” he said.

Grace nodded and was stunned as she felt Matt engulf her in a hug that took the breath out of her. For a moment Grace was frozen and then slowly she let her own arms move around Matt’s body. She allowed herself to squeeze him back and then suddenly he was pulling back away from her and Grace felt deflated, as though a shiny new trinket had been presented to her and then snatched away before she could fully explore its possibilities. Grace lowered her eyes to the ground to hide the yearning that had blasted through her.

“I’ll see you back in Oxford then,” Matt said. “What’s your mobile number?” Reaching into her bag, Grace scrawled her number onto a piece of paper. She handed it to him and raised her eyes to meet his again. Matt had started to turn away and then he stopped. “I’m glad you know,” he said. “I know I can trust you.” And then he was gone, disappearing back into the pub.

For several long minutes, Grace stood there, staring up at the pub signage that was gently swinging in the breeze, her heart soaring as she wondered what her second year at Oxford might bring.

Chapter 13

Perhaps this was what love felt like.

The thought was so unsettling, so far out of left field that Lola swerved on the bike that she rode and veered off the bicycle path onto the deep sandy beach of Santa Monica.

“Hey, slow coach, you OK?” The object of her musings spoke and Lola smiled, watching as Simon stepped off his bike and walked onto the sand towards her. She took the hand that he offered and allowed him to swing her to her feet. For a moment she simply stared up at him into his brown eyes and she felt a tremor of anticipation run through her. Was this love? Quickly, she brushed aside the thought and, pushing her sunglasses onto her head, she reached up and kissed Simon slowly, nibbling gently at his lower lip. Once again she felt a shiver of something, even as Simon was pulling away and righting her bike and setting it back onto the path.

“We’ve still got twenty minutes till Abbot Kinney,” he said. Lola fluttered her eyelashes at him, adjusting her sunglasses back onto her nose. She jumped back on the bike and was already pedalling furiously away as she yelled over her shoulder.

“Race you there.”

It was almost three months since Simon had rescued her from her incident at Barneys, and in that time they had become inseparable. As she sped along the bike path, swerving around joggers and roller-bladers and meandering tourists, Lola paid little attention to the postcard-perfect view of the blue sea disappearing into the horizon. Instead, her thoughts turned inward as she considered Simon. She had started early; precocious some had called it. Billy, one of her mother’s husbands, had christened her a little Lolita even as his eyes had roved up and down her figure. And yet, for a girl who had been hooking up since she was thirteen, who had woken up in more strange beds than she’d had carbohydrate dinners, the situation with Simon was something else. Something far out of her comfort zone. With him she did not immediately run out of bed, she allowed him to hold her, they actually talked and slowly Lola had found herself telling him more about herself than she had ever really shared with anyone. What they had seemed so much more than every other meaningless, forgettable fuck that she had experienced in her life. And Lola felt herself blush at the person she’d once been, who had sneered at people who used the word lovemaking.

“Eat my dust.” Lola looked up as Simon swooped past her, overtaking her on a bend as they approached Venice Beach. She allowed her legs to slow on the pedals as she thought about their destination, a jazz bar on the hip Abbot Kinney Boulevard that attracted up and coming actors, artists, playwrights and musicians. In short, the type of place that Lola and Amber would never frequent. Lola had been resistant at first. Mind-blowing sex marathons in Simon’s downtown studio were one thing, but she had no desire to meet the friends. And yet slowly he had worn her down so that one night a few weeks ago they’d spent Friday night hanging out with the eclectic group that Simon called his friends. Lola had felt nerves flutter in her stomach, had found her social butterfly skills deserting her as she was introduced to this musician and that artist, that Australian and this Brit. With this crowd, Lola found herself on uneasy footing; they were smarter, better read, politically savvy types. She might have gone to political fundraisers with Hollywood stars, but not once could Lola ever remember actually knowing what the candidates were about. She’d been tongue-tied at first and yet slowly, she’d started to find her voice. They were nice people, Lola found, and she was filled with a sense of shame because she knew that her crowd would never accept Simon in the way that his friends had welcomed her. She had baulked too, the first time that Simon introduced her as his girlfriend and yet now she felt a warm glow spread through her whenever he said it.

Up ahead Lola could see that Simon had veered off the main path towards the side streets that would take them to Abbot Kinney Boulevard. Lola was looking forward to the buzz, the conversation, the music. She looked forward to being in a place where it seemed no one knew who she was, or who her mother was and, even if they did, they hardly seemed to care. As she took the turning onto the street in pursuit of her lover, Lola mused that perhaps this was love, perhaps she had finally fallen in love. She let out a carefree whoop as she contemplated undoing a lifetime’s habit and surrendering herself to this thing.

As the bar came into view, Lola swung easily off the bike. She caught a reflection of herself in a shop window and smiled. She almost didn’t recognise herself. Certainly the her of three months ago wouldn’t have recognised her. Here she stood in casual denim shorts and a plain white T-shirt and ballet pumps. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail and for once she had no weaves or wefts of hair woven into her own to create length and body. Her face was devoid of make-up and the lipgloss that she had smoothed onto her lips that morning had been kissed off by Simon. In short, she looked like an ordinary Californian girl – no designer duds or flashing cameras in sight and in a flash, Lola realised that she had never been happier. As she chained the hired bike alongside the distinctive yellow one that Simon had leased, Lola felt a vibration against her hip and she reached into her back pocket to fish out her cell phone. For a moment she stared at the caller ID and she felt some of the carefree sunshine dim out of her day. She watched the phone continue to vibrate, until finally it stopped. Slowly, Lola replaced the phone in her pocket but the edge was back as she acknowledged that soon, she would have to face Amber.

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