“First kiss, my foot! You can take yourself where I’ll never see you again!”

The party that Easter was a disaster for Nicole and with these words she stormed out before what was left of the world fell in. She scarcely noticed the little boy in the doorway. His luck was out too, since she hurled past him and knocked him aside. She felt so lousy that, if the door itself had been closed, she might have left a hole as she passed through. As it was the little boy she had inadvertently clouted was left sitting in a heap by the door tears already gathering in his eyes. Apart from the bump, he felt sickened by the sense of tragedy, the way little kids can where there is a lot of shouting and distress.

But it was Alasdair who was truly on the receiving end. Nicole had found him kissing Becky on the landing near the bathroom. She had known both of them since childhood; all three had shared years of school together in which time it had been widely accepted that she and Alasdair were closest.

Nicole, tall and elegant with long blond hair, looked beautiful in her short black dress and heels. At fifteen she could be as glamorous as any of the crowd who had gathered for her birthday party that night. But she was too upset after her discovery to care about the admiration of the boys there or anywhere else! Only when she lay in her bed crying and storming, did she properly realise why it had hurt her so much. More than the sense of Becky’s treachery and Alasdair’s deceit was the knowledge that, for some unknown reason, he had never kissed Nicole herself nor she him. It was a crazy truth, to get to her fifteenth birthday and never have him snog her let alone enjoy the passion and the care that might have happened in the romance she had somehow assumed would be theirs.

Crazy! Unbelievably crazy! Even as kids playing true-dare-kiss-or-promise he had never actually kissed her.

Out of bed and a little calmer now but unable to face the others, she found herself facing her mirror image as she slumped at her dressing table. The make-up applied so carefully a couple of hours earlier was running quite badly. She looked a state!

But Nicole didn’t care.

Crazy! Not to have kissed him! O.K. O.K. she had done plenty of hard-to-get things but it was Ally’s fault. He had always been so bloody hard to reach! Boys! Stupid boys! They made her sick!

It should have been her he had kissed; it should have been with her! And the idea would give her no peace. It kept dinging in her mind worse than a migraine.

There was a presence. Someone had come into the room. It was her father. She had hardly heard him.

Nicole’s dad was tall and strong and quiet. They had always got on well. When she was little he had read stories to her - Ladybirds first, then Beatrix Potter, next C.S.Lewis - they had always got on. A lot of her friends quarrelled with their fathers; her friends invariably felt more comfortable with their mums and their sisters and their mates.....................but Nicole was close to her dad; it was a closeness developed by suffering.

Well, she was suffering now right enough !

“I’ve just got in,” he said.

He had been to the cinema. That had been the arrangement. He would see a film while her lot were round for the evening to celebrate her birthday. But he would be back just after ten in case things got out of hand (at any rate she knew this is what he had meant when they had discussed it)

“How was it?” she asked him tearfully.

“It was O.K. Quite romantic. They made it so clear how so many of those poor souls must have died from the cold when the ship went down - I mean the ones who survived the sinking........”

He held her hand. It was a cold enough hand as things were, without needing to remind her of the dying in the North Atlantic. Her father passed comment on the fact when he touched her. She shrugged. She wasn’t bothered about how cold her hand was or about the film. Everybody she knew had seen it. She had already done her crying about it. But she had gone with her friends when it had first been shown locally and Alasdair had been with her that night too, which meant that there had been another chance on that occasion for a first kiss which she had screwed up so wonderfully! She remembered only too clearly how he had asked to walk her home - but no! She had insisted on calling in at Elaine’s instead and she had done it only to be awkward.

They sat quietly. Her father had always been able to make things calmer.

“They’ve all gone except Polly and Alasdair,” said her father. (Polly was Alasdair's sister) “Alasdair wanted.........”

“I don’t care what he wants! He can go to hell!”

Now she was crying again. Her father held her all the time. After a little while he spoke again.

“He says he wanted to talk but you wouldn’t let him - that there was a misunderstanding.”

“Oh, yeah! Do you know what he did ?”

Now she was looking at her father for the first time. His face looked drawn and his eyes were fixed on her in a way he could manage sometimes, so that you felt you couldn’t say a word to him. He must, the girl knew, have suffered so much when her mum had gone away and yet each time they tried to talk about it he would say, “You must be missing her too. Girls need their mothers!”

Perhaps he was thinking of mum right that minute. His eyes were so serious, you could tell even from behind his glasses, because not even his glasses could conceal how many more creases there were in his face since that time. His hair, what there was left of it, was all grey now. She suddenly felt such sorrow for him.

But when he spoke it was to ask her what had happened to Robbie.

“Robbie?”

“He got knocked over.”

“I - I didn’t realise.”

“You must have bumped into him as you came upstairs.”

“Oh, my God ! Dad, I’m so sorry!”

Nicole was sincere enough in the reaction she made. It was her way of acknowledging her family role now that her mother had gone.

“I think it’s O.K.,” her father informed her. “He just got knocked out of the way.”

“Oh, my God! Let me go to him!”

“It’s O.K. really. He’s asleep now. I have seen him.”

“Oh no! Oh no!” she kept saying.

And her father kept telling her it was O.K. “You can see him in the morning. Or he might come to you himself. Alasdair helped him to get up.”

And then she faced her father again and a piercing blue light came into the eyes of the blond Nicole.

“Dad, I never want to see Becky again!”

Her father let go of her hand and stood up.

“In that case I’ll tell him and Polly to go,” he said. “He was hoping to see you.”

“Well he can’t! I mean it. I hate the bastard!”

“I think I’ve got the point, honey.”

“Then tell him!”

As her father turned to go, she added, “I’m sorry about Robbie.”

“Actually I’m surprised he was up so late. I told him to be in bed for nine.”

“I just didn’t see him.”

“Apparently he’d been exploring.”

 

Nicole’s little brother, he was scarcely half her age, had, until the time of the collision, been enjoying himself. To a point at least.

Though he knew most of Nicole’s friends, they were all too old to be of interest to him for long. The little boy had gone to his own room, therefore, and sat watching his DVD for a while. His dad had thought of taking him to the cinema, but Robbie was, he had decided, too young for Titanic and would have been upset by the sinking scenes anyway. The family had worried about Robbie ever since his mother’s going. They had felt that he might be the one most damaged in the long term, and so he had been left at home that night to watch his film of the Narnia stories having first promised his father that he would retire at the agreed time. But, in his father’s absence, Robbie had tired of watching by himself and there was a lot of sound coming from below generated by the music Nicole’s friends were playing, not to mention the row they were making with their talking and shouting. It was all too distracting. Robbie had emerged on the landing two or three times, once for a genuine visit to the loo but mostly because he had wished his dad would come home.

It was an old rambling house with stairs likely to creak when everything was quiet - no fear of that at present with all the noise coming from the party! It was the first time Nicole had had so many to visit at once with no adults about. The fair-haired little boy had heard her discuss it with their father. Daddy would go out to see the film for three hours; that meant he would be home soon after ten. Robbie must go to his own room early and turn his light out by nine at the latest.

Robbie had not wanted to watch Narnia again. The party noise was making him restless. He felt tempted to do a little exploring. He knew that his father would not be home for another hour and he knew that he would not be able to sleep until his dad actually got back. Indeed, there was a lovely sense of anticipation in the comfort of being tucked up and kissed good-night and feeling safe.

There were other rooms on the landing: Nicole’s room; the bathroom; mum and dad’s room- then came the stair rail which marked the route up to the next landing. Robbie was pleased that they had another storey to their house; most other houses did not; all of his own friends thought it cool.

A lot of mum and dad’s old stuff was up in the top rooms. He had been allowed there sometimes, but his father did not encourage visits to this area. Nicole had told him that it was upsetting for dad because there were so many memories buried in the attic.

As though he had had a flash of inspiration, Robbie picked up his torch. It would be much more exciting using this than the ordinary lights.

There were two rooms at the top of the house. You were right up in the rafters here. One of the rooms was the bedroom they had used for visitors; one of them was for storage - and it was this last room the little boy wanted to see.

The stairs were indeed creaky and the door of the store room creaked too; but no one could hear him. They were all too busy downstairs.

There was a dusty feel to the place. The beam of his torch, as he swept it to and fro, was like a searchlight. Robbie could see the table with his mother’s old sewing machine on top. In fact it was the red casing for the machine that he saw, but he knew what it was. After this came much disappointment because the room contained mostly bags of this and boxes of that. Robbie recognised for example the big black bin liner containing the duplo and the Fisher-Price toys that he was now too old for. He knew that these two cardboard boxes on his right contained old paperbacks that his father claimed he would one day send to Oxfam, though here they still were. He knew that in the next little chest was a collection of those old records made out of black vinyl which had been popular when his parents were young - and that the next bag covered some Christmas trimmings, while next to them was some old crockery packed up in ancient newspapers and more stuff that his father should have disposed of long ago.............

..................and then the light of the torch picked out something that awakened a memory even in the mind of a seven- year- old. Uncovered and propped against a table leg were some pictures - prints in fact, though the boy saw them as valuable antiques which he had not seen for ages and ages. He remembered someone saying they were copies but that did not matter in the least. What did matter to the boy was that the subject matter was very sad. For here was the arrest of Jesus painted by someone very famous. Robbie could not remember the artist’s name though he had been told once or twice in the past. He could recognise Judas, though, leaning forward to betray Our Saviour while one of the soldiers appeared to be stabbing Jesus in the back. Then there was another man with a knife and another on the floor and other people all over the place in this picture of the worst act of betrayal.

Robbie did not want to see any more of it. As he whirled away it occurred to him, as it had once before, that Nicole was so unlucky to have a birthday so close to Good Friday. It was also a reminder to the boy of another mystery: why was it that his mother had been attracted to such an unhappy picture?

Robbie hurried downstairs. Suddenly he did not want to be among the dusty secrets of the house. The adventure of exploration had turned against him. He meant to reach the security of his own bedroom with as much speed as possible.

But the plan was not quite so simple.

Robbie heard the voices on the landing before he became aware that he was so close to the speakers. He stopped the second he heard them feeling instinctively that he did not want them to see him.

       He recognised Alasdair immediately - a tall, strongly-built boy with close-cropped hair; some said he was a really good footballer. Anyway, for some soppy reason, Nicole liked Alasdair.

And with Alasdair was one of Nicole’s other friends, Becky. Becky had been nice to Robbie once. What had she done? Oh, yes! She had given him a book to help him find out who Diana was when they had been doing a project on Greek gods and goddesses. Becky was tall like Nicole. She was all made -up the way girls did for parties, not that it made any sense to him; but there could be no missing her red hair which she had tied up in a green ribbon.

Robbie sat down on the stair and made himself as small as possible in the shadows by the wall. He was able to look down on his sister’s friends through the gaps in the stair rails. Since he had not put the light on there was a good deal of shadow on the stair. They were talking. They did not realise that he was there.

Robbie, sensing that he might be discovered and get into trouble, wanted them to go away as quickly as possible. All he wanted to do was regain the safety of his room. He wished now that he had done as instructed and watched the Narnia series, for the picture of Jesus and Judas that his mother had left had been somehow shocking in the shadows of the torchlight - a reminder of some deep sorrow.

But these two, Alasdair and Becky, were making no move to go. They seemed very interested in their conversation.

“Thank you so much,” Becky was saying. She seemed, to the eavesdropper, to be in a very soppy mood.

“I just saw it there,” Alasdair replied. “Honestly, it’s nothing!”

What on earth were they talking about? Robbie might not, in the ordinary course of things, have been bothered; but, being placed as he was, there was little for him to do but hear what they had to say.

It was about some jewellery - the thing had a chain on the end - the child could see that.

“It may be nothing to you, love, but it might have caused me all sorts of trouble -” so relieved was Becky that she hugged him to her. It was a spontaneous gesture as was the big, luscious kiss Becky planted on her hero. But Robbie had had no time to think how soppy it all was, before a shriek of anger and misery had exploded like enemy fire to make him jump with fright.

It was Nicole. What on earth was the matter with her? Here she was yelling and shrieking about something and here were her friends, who had flown apart when caught unawares, joining in the shouting and the anger.

“You don’t understand - you don’t understand - don’t be so stupid! Can’t you see ? Can’t you just listen?”

Such a commotion! - the kind of thing that made his sister and her friends seem so stupid at times.

They were going. Thank goodness! They all went downstairs. What on earth was Nicole so angry for ? Didn’t she realise that Alasdair was just giving back to Becky something that the girl had lost? 

Some instinct told the little boy that he had better follow and explain.............

“But, just as I got to the living room door,” he told his father later that evening, “Nicole came rushing out and knocked me over!”

When everyone had gone, Nicole came downstairs to join her father. He was in the kitchen making his coffee. She came upon him silently and managed to startle him.

“It must be conscience,” she said. “I keep thinking about Robbie.”

“He won’t think about it in the morning,” came the reply. “I’m sure he won’t.”

“I don’t suppose he will. But I - I just feel bad about it. I could’ve done better - what with him missing mum and all.”

She found a cup to make her coffee. Everything was quiet now. Her father rarely played the radio the way her mother had always done. It seemed so long since the little gathering of friends she had invited had been going so strong and everything had been fine....................

“I looked in on him just now as I came down,” she said. “He was fast asleep. He seemed O.K.”

“He’ll be fine.”

“But you know what a plaintive little face he has when everything’s going wrong. The way he can look - you know what I mean.”

Her father knew. ‘Plaintive’ was a word Nicole had got from her mother. He smiled ruefully and told her he was not likely, on his own account, to forget the time he had smacked the boy for gouging his initials in the sideboard. The smarting offender had run off to find his mother to complain that daddy had smacked him on some scratch he had sustained on his leg.

Nicole sighed. “I bet he made you feel really bad,” she said.

“Oh, he did that all right. But there’s more mystery to our Robbie than that. Do you know what your little brother was up to earlier this evening?”

“While I was supposed to be keeping an eye on him, you mean ?”

“No. I wasn’t trying to make you inflict more guilt on yourself. The thing is - little brother set out to explore the spare rooms tonight.”

“Did he hurt himself?”

“Not that I know of. But he did find some things belonging to mum.”

“Then he shouldn’t have been up there!”

“I don’t mind that particularly. He does come up with the strangest ideas. When I tucked him in and gave him a goodnight kiss, he said, ‘Kissing is such a funny way of doing things!’ I asked him why and he said, ‘Because, when Jesus was kissed, it did no good at all!’.”

Nicole was listening carefully.

“Don’t be so startled, dear,” her father observed. “You would probably agree. You never liked that old print either. It looks as though Robbie found mum’s picture of The Arrest of Christ by Albrecht Durer. I see you remember it! It’s quite a violent scene but right in the middle is Jesus being kissed by Judas. Robbie never liked it. It made him uncomfortable.”

Nicole agreed with his earlier point. She had never liked it either.

“A sign of affection need not always be a means of treachery,” her father said reflectively.

“I know what you’re getting at, dad!” Nicole bridled. “I don’t want to talk about it!”

“I’m sure you don’t! Still, before you go all moody on me, there’s something else Robbie saw - on the landing - as he was coming back downstairs -”

“Oh ?” Her attention was caught.

“But the two of them didn’t see him.”

Nicole’s father sat down at the kitchen table. He sipped his coffee and waited for her to respond. Though he had not meant to look at his daughter too closely, he had already recognised that crease of her brow so typical of her as a child. He wondered if she could bring herself to ask him, “What did they say, then?” but she remained silent.

He wondered, too, whether he was really good at this kind of thing, since he had meant to be a good father. He had never once told Nicole how he had been at a party with his wife once when he had found the girl’s mother snogging Ray Brooke on a sofa in a back room at the golf club. He had always supposed that he knew something about hurt - just let anyone try telling him that a first kiss like that is ‘nothing’. He had never felt jealous of Ray until the day he saw that Stephanie secretly fancied the man.

Nicole had paused. She, too, was sitting at the table now looking at her coffee cup as though it somehow had all the answers.

“Did Becky ever talk of losing a locket?” her father asked.

Nicole shrugged. “I s’pose so.”

“Does that mean it had troubled her - losing this thing?”

Nicole drew breath - emerged from her reverie.

“She lost it at The Blue Room the other week. It’s a family thing - an heirloom - sentimental value and all that. She cried when it went missing.”

“So that whoever found it would have been in her good books?”

“Oh yes, naturally!”

“Alasdair found it. He returned it to her on the landing as their paths crossed. Becky kept saying, ‘Thank you so much’ over and over. Robbie described what he had seen as soppy. He said she just kept on saying it. Alasdair told her that it was no big deal - he had just happened to find it and that is all there was to it. Robbie said that she seemed so pleased and then she kissed him. Robbie thought that bit was really soppy!”

Nicole and her father were facing each other.

“And then I came along,” she said in a whisper.

“Just as you say. Just like that. I have to say that what little I got from Alasdair before he went  home confirmed it - and he still doesn’t know that Robbie was listening. Alasdair said that Becky was just so grateful - no more than that - and that she had taken him by surprise. They had never kissed before. I must say that, at his age, I’d have had some trouble saying all this to the father of the girl I liked - unless it was really, really important that she knew.”

Nicole covered her face with her hands. She gave a long sigh.

“Exactly the same kind of thing once happened to me,” the father told his daughter. “Only there wasn’t such a good explanation on that occasion.”

When she heard him say this, Nicole did something she had not done for a long while. She came around the table and she put her arms around him and they hugged each other.

“So dads can hurt too,” she said at last.

“Your dad didn’t invent this stuff, you know. Robbie wouldn’t have made it up. Alasdair’s going to call in the morning - if he makes it through the night without a broken heart, that is!”

In view of all that had taken place, Nicole might have slept out of sheer fatigue. As it was, she passed a restless night but finally managed to get some sleep. It was half past eight next morning when she finally woke and the lateness of the hour surprised her.

She walked down to the kitchen in her dressing gown. Her father, in his working clothes, was at the breakfast table as though he had never moved, except to dress, since their conversation of a few hours ago.

“Alasdair and Polly called,” he said. “I told them to wait in the living room, but Polly didn’t stay. Sisterly support has its limitations, apparently.”

“And Ally’s still there?”

“Yes, he is.”

Nicole had taken an age to get to sleep dreaming about the beautiful romantic reunion and the closeness she meant to re-establish with her childhood sweetheart. Now the golden moment was so close and she did not mean to let the kisses of reconciliation (not to mention the passion) go unclaimed.

But, as she turned, it was her little brother Robbie she saw first. By some chance he was sitting near the doorway, back propped against the skirting board, his eyes riveted on his new yo-yo. And he had in his face that plaintive look he could do so well - it was a face that their mother had sometimes made too - a face to break your heart with its innocence and helplessness. Yes, their mother was reflected there. What a sweetie he could be, Nicole’s little brother; and he probably did not even know how he had saved the one romance she was ever likely to want.

And so Nicole and Alasdair did manage more than one passionate embrace; but, before any of that, Nicole stooped and lovingly gave her little brother the first kiss.

28-29 October 9 November 1998