Don’t You Forget About Me(104)

‘Yes. I know I’ve not given you that impression. I think … your father so adored you and monopolised you, it didn’t leave much room for us.’

I got it, all of a sudden – I knew where the resentment and hostility I’ve always felt from Mum, came from. Her problem with me was that Dad fell out of love with her, and stayed in love with me. It made me a rival as well as a daughter. Now we’d discussed the affair, things had moved. She realised I was always on her side, too.

‘I miss Dad, Mum,’ I said.

‘So do I,’ she said, ‘though Lord knows why.’

‘I’m so glad I still have you though.’ I squeezed her arm, and her eyes were shiny.

Now, sat in my English Literature tutorials in a modern office block at Sheffield University, I feel like a cat at a Mice Only party, trying to conceal my tail. At first I flattered myself that I look youthful enough they might not notice my incongruity, but I soon gave myself away with my punctuality and cheerful introducing of myself.

Sometimes I think the undergraduates are grateful for my interrogations of the tutor, giving them plenty of time to go blank and sneak a look at their phone screens.

Except when the hour is nearly up and I ask when our essays are due in and the tutor says, ‘Oh thank you for reminding me, Georgina, that would be Friday.’ I hear the audible groan and irritated exhalation that the keeno mature student has gone and dropped everyone in it, again.

I can’t help myself though, I’m so excited to be here. I’ve had four first-class essay marks! I even got to grips with Beowulf!

I find the lectures almost luxurious. An hour to tune out of the city outside and live in the world of ideas and study and enjoy a sense my brain is being improved, knowledge increased, critical faculties sharpened, I said. ‘Yeah, like when you plug your phone in overnight for an iOS upgrade. Only I’m allowed to sleep through that,’ says Jared.

Jared is a very hairy tall boy in a beanie and the only student so far who’s spoken to me. He found out my age and told me he would totally take me out if I wanted, and ‘age isn’t a thing for me, if we vibe’. It made me feel like we’d be recreating Harold and Maude. I thanked him and said I was having some time out of the crazy game we call dating.

‘Right, are you like, divorced?’ he said. ‘Any kids? I’m probably not down for that whole scene.’

YOUTH.

I bounce into my classes every day, I walk around the campus with a smile on my face, and I don’t care if anyone thinks I’m a divvy. It’s such a novelty to me, to feel like I’m fixing things.

I want to get a First, not to be obnoxious, but to prove that there’s no shame in travelling the long way round to get where you want to go. It doesn’t matter if you take wrong turns. Arriving somewhere you want to be, in the end, is what counts.

So I reach out into the past, take the hand of that vulnerable, hopeful girl I used to be, and pull her forward to join me.

‘This is very profound, and moving,’ Clem had said, when I finally told them about Lucas coming to see me, after my reading. ‘But why aren’t you boning each other’s brains out?’

‘Have you really never considered training as a counsellor?’ Rav said to Clem.

‘I’m just saying – what’s not to bone about this man? He’s admitted his mistakes. He has great honour. Handy with some DIY. Stinking rich. And so handsome he could be a vampire.’

‘Urgh,’ Rav said. ‘What does that even mean?’

‘Undead high cheekbones. Moonlit skin. Angry dark hair.’

‘Cock like an ice-cold Calippo. Oh WHAT, Clem? You’re going to start acting like I’m too much?’ Rav said.

‘Well. I’d be on my back faster than an old lady on a frosty walk,’ Clem concluded.

Today, it’s my thirty-first birthday and I asked my friends if we could go hiking in the Peaks. Oh God, the UPROAR. Clem wasn’t going to be able to wear the Mary Quant dress she planned. Rav had some new navy suede shoes that he’d earmarked for an outing and: ‘Look, I know you feel like Miss Marple around these freshers but the self-loathing can go too far.’

‘You and I can go another time,’ Jo soothed, always the peace weaver.

I offered them a compromise – a night in The Lescar. No fuss, no frills. Clem was so disappointed she included a tiara from her shop in her gifts, which she bid me put on straight away. ‘Otherwise it’s nothing but a night in the pub.’

I felt a bit of a dick at first, but alcohol’s helping with that. Rav checks his watch, says: ‘My round,’ and goes to the bar.

‘But to be clear, you do fancy Lucas, right?’ Clem says. It’s been six months but she is still a dog with a bone.

I adjust my tiara. ‘It’s not difficult to fancy him, let’s be honest.’

‘What if he fancied you?’ Jo says.

I snort. ‘You’re kidding right?’

‘Why not?’ she says.

‘I dunno: our grimly tortured history and the fact that when I tried to kiss him once, he pushed me away and told me I repulsed him? I can read those sort of signals you know, I speak fluent “Man”.’

‘No,’ Jo says, swirling her drink in her glass, a double Monkey Shoulder on the rocks. I love her blokish taste in liquor. Jo is on Tinder, and having the time of her life since we got the tech sorted for her (she initially set it to ‘Men Within 100 Yards’ and Rav had to point out if there was a man hiding in her shed, he was unlikely to be Mr Right). Shagger Phil is, as best we know, a pining, celibate mess. The jury is still out on whether they’ll end up together, but this way, he’ll have waited for her.