Don’t You Forget About Me(95)

The time though, something is different, there’s someone with them I’ve not seen before. He turns, stoops and picks her up, throws her over his shoulder with practised ease. She’s wailing, wearing stripy woollen tights and a tiny pinafore, maybe three years old. He kisses her cheek.

Richard Hardy is a father. Richard Hardy has a daughter.

What did I just use to vanquish the hold Robin had over me? Words. My words saved me.

I put my mobile to my ear and call Devlin.

‘Would you mind if I still do the last Share Your Shame thing, now I’ve left?’





40


I let Jammy out of his hutch for a roam around while I sit at the table and get my A4 notebook out.

‘Imagine if I had my own place,’ I say to Jammy, as he makes slow but steady progress in the direction of the sink, ‘This could be us every day.’

Karen is away for the weekend, back to see her parents in Aberdeen, and the timing couldn’t be better. Not that Karen going away would ever be unwelcome. I print at the top:

My Worst Day At School

It’s the final Share Your Shame subject, and although I haven’t decided if I can bear to get up and perform it, I know what I want to say.

I write. I write some more. I try to rephrase the first thing I wrote and score it out. It’s all so facetious, so striving to amuse, so false. In the peace of the kitchen, with the hum of next door’s maggot tanks, I try to banish the thought that keeps bubbling up, every time I look at the block print subject letters.

My chest rises and falls and eventually it heaves. Fat tears roll down my face and spatter the paper, so I move it from under me.

The door behind me bangs and before I have any chance to gather myself, or conceal the fact I’ve been weeping, Karen is in the kitchen, with sticky-uppy hair, a rugby top and her usual look of flushed belligerence. She drops a Karrimor rucksack down.

A pause.

‘What’s up with you?’

I try to talk, and I can’t, having to cup my hand round my mouth while I make a strange wheezy inhalation noise, the inward drawing of air in a sob.

‘Have you had some news or something?’ Karen says. Even in my diminished state, I notice how she’s sort of angry that I might’ve had a bereavement and that it’s affecting her enjoyment of her own kitchen.

I shake my head and fight to get control of my vocal cords.

‘I’m writing about My Worst Day At School for a writing competition at the pub,’ I gasp. ‘And I know they want something funny and light and easy. But my worst day at school. It was terrible. I think it might’ve ruined my life.’

I put my hands over my eyes and sob and wipe the tears, and afterwards, when I’m back in control, Karen is still staring at me. I gulp again.

‘It’s the truth but no one ever wants the truth. I’ve never told anyone the truth. I’m sick of being the person who tries to fit in and tells people what they want to hear and acts like nothing bothers her, it’s not got me anywhere.’

‘So tell them the truth,’ Karen says, shrugging. ‘Fuck the fuckers. Worst day at school, right?’

‘Yes.’

‘Not funny or light or easy or whatever. Worst. They asked for worst, give them worst.’

‘Should I? Even if everyone sits there saying oh that’s grim, you’re grim, thanks for ruining my evening?’

‘They’ve all turned up to hear people talk about their worst days at school. As far as I remember it, school was fucking awful. If you had to live through your worst day and they only have to hear about it, in the name of entertainment, I’d say they got off lightly.’

I nod, slowly.

‘I should just hit them with it?’

‘Yeah. Pull no punches. Why the fuck should you? Why is it your fault that your worst day was that bad?’

With Karen saying that, something clicks.

‘Yes. OK. Thank you. You’re right. I’ll write it my way.’

‘Right. Glad that’s sorted. I’ve had the worst train journey of my life and when I got halfway, my mum calls to say they’ve been snowed in and to turn back round. Pile of piss.’

No one is as wedded to the using of swear words as Karen, and I include myself here.

‘Karen,’ I say. ‘Thank you. You’ve really helped.’

‘Have I? OK.’

She looks nonplussed and a little self-conscious.

I offer to make some Ovaltine, and a newfound camaraderie settles between us, until Karen screams: ‘WHY IS THAT CREEPY TERRAPIN WANDERING ABOUT, PUT IT BACK IN ITS BOX!’

When she goes up to bed, I spend an hour writing, barely pausing to take my pen from the paper. The words flood out of me.

Mrs Pemberton taught me the word for what I’m feeling. Catharsis.

Now all I have to do is find the courage to read it.





41


A stage. A microphone. A long walk to the stage. A quiet in the room that feels greater and more intimidating than any quiet in any room I’ve ever known. I can’t do it I can’t do it I can’t do it.

I can do it. I have to prove it to myself by starting speaking. Deep breath. Jump.

‘When I first tried to prepare something for tonight’s show, I knew what my worst day at school was, without a moment’s hesitation. But I didn’t write about it. Instead I was going to tell you about the time me and my friend Jo drank a bottle of Malibu and pineapple and pierced each other’s ears with ice cubes and safety pins. Jo got a staph cocc infection, hers swelled up to the size of The BFG and I was grounded for a month. Only one of mine actually worked so I went around wearing a single large hoop, like a pirate.’