Sweet Sorrow(23)

‘Charlie’s fine. We both are, thank you.’

Without looking away from the cupboard, she held above her head an open jar of raspberry jam, tufts of white mould like candy-floss sprouting from its neck. She tossed the jar into the sink with a clatter.

I already knew how this one ended, the volume increasing then snapping off with the slam of the door, and so I left and walked out to Mum’s car where Billie sat, head down, reading with her hand pressed to her mouth like a gag. The day was still hot but the window was up, so I had to rap twice with my knuckle, and this alone saddened me more than anything else that had happened that day. Were we close? When we lived together we’d nipped and provoked each other in the expected ways, but in the dark days of our parents’ transformation the bickering had been exchanged for a weary solidarity, whispering between bunks like squaddies under the command of drunk and incompetent officers. Now the alliance had been broken and even the most inane domestic conversation seemed loaded. Happiness in her new home would be a betrayal, unhappiness just one more thing to be angry about.

Billie waited for the window to come all the way down. ‘All right?’

‘Yep.’

‘They arguing?’

‘Just starting now,’ I said and looked at my watch as if the event was scheduled.

‘How’s it here?’

‘Same as before. How is it over there?’

‘Bizarre.’

‘How are “the twins”?’ Casting Billie in the role of Cinderella was the sole small amusement that we could find in her new situation.

‘The twins? They’re very sporty. You open a cupboard and there’s this rain of footballs and hockey sticks and badminton nets. They keep trying to get me involved, like I’m this sickly orphan and they’re trying to make me feel at home, so we can be pals or something, bond over lacrosse. They’re all “Billie, come out and play lacrosse with us!” And I’m all “What is this, school? I don’t do games unless it’s on the timetable.” Every time I look up, they’re in their sports bras, warming up or down or whatever. Their dad’s the same, can’t stop chucking stuff. “Billie! Catch!” “No – just pass it to me.” When he’s not chucking stuff at people, they sit and watch cricket, days and days of it.’

‘What, Mum too?’

‘Yeah, though you can tell she’s glazing over after three minutes. She calls it making an effort, I call it collaboration. She even played golf. Talk about crossing to the dark side. “While we’re guests here, it’s important that we make an effort.” I mean, fuckin’ hell – golf!’ Billie’s swearing was a new innovation, self-conscious and furtive. Like a toddler pretending to smoke, it seemed wrong to me and, awkwardly, we both looked towards the house.

‘Want to come in?’

‘Nah. Leave them to it. Dad still Mad Dad?’

Opening the car door, I slipped into the backseat furtively like an informer. ‘He’s all right mostly, then he goes a bit manic, stays up late and drinks, which he’s not meant to do on his pills. Some days I don’t see him at all.’ From inside the house, we heard Mum’s raised voice, the clatter of cupboards. ‘I hate it here. I mean I hated it before, but I really hate it now.’

Billie reached back and patted my hand. ‘Be strong, my brother,’ she said in a portentous, Star Wars voice. We both laughed, and I tried something for the first time. ‘Miss you.’

‘Oh puh-lease,’ she said, and then, ‘You too.’

But now my mother was out of the house, slamming the door, my father opening it immediately so that he might slam it himself later. For now, he would stand in the doorway, arms crossed, a rancher protecting his land. I jumped from the car, slammed that door too – would we ever close a door gently again? – and immediately Mum was in stunt-driver mode, spinning the wheels, over-revving as she reversed the car and then drove away.

I glimpsed Billie, sticking out her chin and screwing her index finger into her temple, and I raised my hand and went back inside, back to my own team.





The Name Game


For the first time in weeks, I set my alarm.

But for some reason sleep escaped me (shape of nose, shade of blue, great curve of, precise constellation) and in the restless hours, I made a plan: I would turn up at nine thirty, join in with whatever the hell they did up there, approach Fran casually at tea-break, lunchtime at the latest, ask for her number, then, once I had it in my hand, run like Indiana Jones runs from that boulder.

I practised what I might say – great to talk to you yesterday, how’s the ankle, listen, hey, I wondered … I may even have muttered the words out loud, experimenting with can we get coffee?, trying to shed the American drawl. Get coffee? Go for coffee? Have coffee? Cup of coffee? If ‘coffee’ was going to cause this much angst, perhaps I should just ask her for tea, but come for tea was something people in bonnets said. Tea was insipid and sexless, and coffee was the darker, more intoxicating beverage. They did cafetières at the Cottage Loaf Tea Rooms, and I imagined Fran chin in hand, toying with a sugar-cube as I told some story, then tossing her head with sudden laughter while I pushed down the plunger like a detonator. Hey, shall we go on somewhere else, get a proper drink?

But where would we go? We certainly couldn’t come here, with the children’s bunk beds and the resident nervous breakdown on our sofa, and Fran Fisher was not the kind of girl you took to the swings in Dog Shit Park, with or without cider. Was it ungentlemanly to offer her cider? An imported lager perhaps, something posh, not a can? Should I put some vodka into a screw-top bottle? Tea or coffee, lager or vodka, bottle or can? I fell asleep at six and woke to the alarm at eight, got out of bed and showered, straining not to wake Dad, willing the water to fall quietly, then shaved with the care of a surgeon. I reached for the Lynx, the variety called ‘Aztec’ (‘So this is what wiped them out,’ Dad would say, sniffing the air), and sprayed the best part of a can, enough to give each armpit a coat as thick as the icing on a wedding cake. It crackled as I lowered my arm.