Sweet Sorrow(69)

‘How old are you, sonny?’

‘Eighteen?’ Mistake to phrase it as a question. Never mind. Concentrate. I pressed the money into her palm like a bribe. ‘We just want chips!’

She sighed and handed me a large wooden fish, a number nine painted on its side. ‘Here’s your order number. Listen out, we won’t call it twice.’

‘And can the chips be cooked this time? The last lot were raw inside.’

‘Don’t push your luck, junior,’ she said and waved me away. I scooped up the packets. All these snacks – I’d be greeted like a hero. In the beer garden I saw a family of five on the bench by the door, three girls, two of them identical, laughing at something their dad had said, and even before I’d passed, I knew the third girl would be my sister, out with my mother and her new boyfriend.

They’d not seen me yet. Jonathan was basking in their laughter and using a half-eaten chip to scoop tartar sauce from his ramekin, and I thought for a moment of ducking back into the pub and skirting the perimeter but— ‘Charlie!’ shouted Mum.

‘Hello, Charlie,’ said Billie, straightening her face.

‘Hello, young man!’ said Jonathan, lean and fit (‘He works out,’ Billie had told me) in his button-down Ted Baker shirt, crop-haired and stubbled like my old Action Man. In our sole encounter at the golf club, he had treated my disdain as if it were a customer complaint and he slipped into this manner now, patient, humble, leaping to his feet and dusting his hands on his khaki cargo pants before offering a handshake. My hands were full and so instead he indicated the girls. ‘Have you met the twins?’

The twins looked up. In a parallel life, the one where Mum had taken me with her, I’d imagined myself as a sulky but intriguing rebel, a cuckoo in the nest, and I wondered if there might have been a weird, dark tension to it all, forbidden romance in the face of their father’s disapproval. Perhaps that’s why Mum had thought it best to leave me; I was just too dangerous to have in the house. Now that fantasy disintegrated in the face of their scalding indifference. ‘Hiya!’ said one. ‘Pleased to meet you,’ the other; Chatsborne girls, healthy and hearty, as rosy-faced as if they’d just zipped away their rackets. They returned to picking at the side salad.

‘What are you doing here?’ said Mum, bustling things along.

‘Just out!’ I said, petulant, embarrassed by my petulance. Billie lowered her eyes and sucked at her straw.

‘You work Fridays.’

‘Changed my shift.’

‘So – who are you with?’

‘Just with some mates.’

‘The boys? Tell them to come and say hello!’

I glanced across at the table. Sam and Grace the musicians had arrived, Sam putting his penny whistle to his lips.

‘No, some other friends.’

‘Do I know them?’

‘You don’t have to know everyone I know, do you?’

‘No, but I can be curious about them. Can’t I?’

From the benches, I could hear the wheedling peep of Sam’s whistle, playing a jig. Mum followed my look. ‘Honestly, who brings their recorder to the pub?’

‘Dogs won’t like it!’ said Jonathan, and the girls laughed. Honestly, who laughs at their parent’s joke?

‘It’s not a recorder,’ I snapped. ‘It’s a penny whistle.’

‘I stand corrected!’ said Jonathan, holding up his hands, and I wanted to rip the pockets from his cargo pants. Billie sucked noisily at her straw.

‘Billie, love,’ said Mum, ‘I think the glass is empty now.’ At our table, Grace joined Sam on the tambour.

‘I’ve got to go,’ I said, and rattled the peanuts.

Mum shook her head sadly. ‘Yes, you go. I’ve really enjoyed our little interaction here.’

‘Bye, Billie.’ Billie gave a hostage’s tight smile and I hurried away from Mum’s glare.

I should never have gone to the bar. I’d lost my place next to Fran – nowhere without me, she’d said – and now she was at the far end of the table with Helen and Alex, distancing themselves from the new great joke, Grace and Sam performing pop hits in the style of mediaeval troubadours, in this case ‘Saturday Night’ by Whigfield. I might have had some tolerance for this kind of Cambridge Footlights larkiness on the lawn of Fawley Manor, but here we were already subject to the kind of looks reserved for new arrivals on B-wing. I reached for my drink, any drink. Along with the peanuts, I’d returned with furious resentment, not just of Mum and her boyfriend but of Billie too, out on a Friday night, laughing away with – was he her stepfather now? Were we in step territory?

The song had ended. ‘Now do “Stairway to Heaven”!’

‘No, “Firestarter”!’

‘“When Doves Cry”!’

‘Charlie?’ It was Fran, reaching her arm along the length of the table, mouthing the words you okay?

‘Charlie?’ said Mum, behind me.

Everyone stopped speaking and turned to look.

‘Hello, everyone, I’m Charlie’s mum!’

‘Hello, Charlie’s mum!’ they said. ‘Hello there,’ said Ivor, ‘do you want to join us?’ I looked to Fran, who was smiling, half standing. ‘Yes, come and sit down …’