Growing Up Twice (18 page)

I clearly remember the day Kurt topped himself.

Rosie and I, in possession of our fortnightly dole cheques, met up in The Sussex off Leicester Square at eleven in the morning and drank until eleven in the evening, every time raising a toast to Kurt and shouting, ‘Never mind!’

It might have been that night that we ended up in Tottenham Hale without ever quite knowing why. It’s a sobering thought that I’m nearly three years older now than Kurt was when he died.

So I was twenty-two back then and Michael would have been, let me see, maybe around about, dum de dum, ten. Ten. He was ten the day Rosie and I were toasting Kurt in The Sussex. That’s
TEN.

What am I doing here? What am I doing in the room of this boy who I have nothing in common with, who I hardly know, having sex with him, why? I like him, sure, I like him but it’s wrong. I know it’s wrong, it’s wrong for
him
, it’s wrong for
me
. He’s not going to marry me is he? I don’t even want to get married right now but it’s the total and utter lack of the very possibility that scares me. And, and I’ll be thirty soon and what about if I ever want to have kids? And just because he reminds me of life before Owen, I mean just because of that, it’s not a reason at all really. If it were fine, if I was happy about it, I’d have told the girls, we wouldn’t be having secret shag trysts in the attic of his parents’ house. It’s wrong, wrong, wrong.

I’m going.

I grab my bag and stuff in the knickers I did not put back on and run to the window to reccy the terrain. An azure-blue Land Rover pulls into the drive. Must be very useful for all the off-roading they do around here. But that’s OK, they’ll ring the bell, whoever they are, find out no one is in and then off they’ll go again. I just hope you can’t hear the bell up here.

A tall and vaguely familiar-looking man gets out of the car and then goes round to the boot. As he opens it a red setter leaps out and dances around his feet while he takes out some bags. If my brain has been lagging two beats behind, alarm bells finally peal the moment a flame-haired middle-aged woman draped in a sea-green Pashmina steps out of the car.

I slump on the edge of Michael’s sofa bed and wonder: why are his parents back now?

Feeling my weight on his side of the bed, Michael stirs and snakes his arm around my waist.

‘Mmm baby, come back to bed,’ he says with none of the ironic, jokey tone that is appropriate when using that phrase. I slap his hand away.

‘Michael, how long are your parents away for?’ I ask him in a brittle school-marmish whisper. He sits up, blinking and rubbing sleep out of his face.

‘Relax, will you. Tomorrow night, I said.’ He rolls his eyes.

‘Oh, so why are they downstairs
now
?’ I hear my voice rise in panic. Michael smiles at me as if I’m an idiot, registers the severity of the expression on my face, leaps naked out of bed and straight to the window.

‘Oh, shit,’ he says, seeing the car. ‘It’s OK, you can just stay up here until they’ve gone to bed and I’ll sneak you out.’ I am surprised to find myself offended. Half of me had thought, considering Michael’s apparent devotion to me, that he would suggest we go downstairs, have a cup of tea and get to know the folks. Obviously I would say, ‘Don’t be so ridiculous, I’ll sit up here until they’ve gone to sleep and then you’ll have to sneak me out,’ but it comes as something of a shock to realise that he wants to keep me a secret from them just as much I want to keep him a secret from the rest of my life.

‘I’m not waiting here until then!’ I hiss just to be contrary. ‘It’s only early, I’ll be holed up here for hours! Get me out now!’ He looks at me, taken aback by my temper. And then before we can come up with any ideas, we hear his mother calling up the stairs.

‘Mikey? Darling, are you in?’ I look at him and mouth ‘
Mikey
?’, caught between horror and hilarity. He frowns at me and hastily begins to dress.

‘Mikey? Darling? You’ll never guess what your father did!’ The voice, now a floor nearer, is light and humorous.

‘I bet I can guess,’ I whisper bitterly. Michael just manages to pull his T-shirt over his head when a ginger head appears in the floor as the sofa bed clicks back into place. I am reminded of a post-modern play written by somebody Irish.

‘Oh, you
are
here?’ She smiles brightly, her eyes adjusting to the autumn afternoon gloom. ‘Why are you sitting in the dark? Hello,’ she says, nodding at me.

‘We were watching a film, Mum. Um, this is Holly, from drama club, you remember I’ve talked about her?’

First of all, who is Holly and why has he talked about her? Second of all, why call me Holly? Why can’t I be Jenny from the drama club? And third of all, how old is this flipping Holly meant to be? Is she his tutor? A parent of a fellow student? And fourth of all –
drama club
?

Michael’s mother, now fully in the room, switches on the overhead spots. I brush my fingers through my hair and pray to God and Clinique that the money I have invested in their anti-wrinkle cream pays off.

‘Hello, Holly dear, I’ve heard an awful lot about you. Michael says your improvisation skills are something to behold.’

Oh, are they indeed?

‘Hello, Mrs … um … Mrs …’ I don’t know Michael’s second name.

‘Oh, just call me Fran, dear. All of Michael’s girlfriends do.’

All of them? Well, I wouldn’t want to break the tradition, would I?

‘So, why
are
you back? Tonight’s the anniversary night,’ says Michael, attempting to hand me my jacket at the same time. I ignore him.

‘Your father! He would forget his head, really he would! He only booked the hotel for
next
weekend. Can you imagine it? There we were checking in and the girl’s saying, “Sorry, Mr and Mrs Parrott, you’re not in the register,” and your father’s getting quite blustery as he does in those sorts of situation and then she says – she was charming, very well mannered – “I’ll just check next weekend’s bookings,” and there we were! I knew I should have done it myself. It’s so difficult finding a good hotel that will take pets.’ She and Michael roll their eyes at each other in a spooky carbon-copy sort of way.

This is an afternoon of revelation. First of all I discover that the man I have just slept with is called Mikey Parrott. Then I discover he has had girlfriends, in the plural, and that he talks about some teen slut called Holly. And then I witness a woman on her twenty-fifth wedding anniversary laughing about how it has been completely ruined. A split-second comparison with what I remember from my own parents’ married life explains why I find it all so surprising.

Mrs Mikey pats my arm and says, ‘Come downstairs, Holly dear, and meet my dreadful husband. We can all have a nice cup of tea.’

‘Actually, Mrs Parrott, I mean Fran, I have to be going. Mum’s expecting me.’ Michael nods vigorously at my side and the minx in me thinks, ‘But oh, what the hell,’ and I conclude, ‘But one cup of tea won’t do any harm.’

As soon as I am installed on their wine-red sofa (that matches the pelmeted curtains) with Charlie the red setter’s head ensconced snugly on my lap, I regret my impulse to wind Michael up.

So far they haven’t got me under a bright light and shouted, ‘Ha, impostor! Anyone can tell you’re practically middle-aged!’ No, it’s worse than that.

First of all, Mrs Mikey brings me a silver-framed photo of her and Mr Parrott on their wedding day back in 1977. They look sweet and so disco and Mr Parrott looks so much like Michael that I smile with genuine affection. This encourages her. Next she brings the wedding photos of her daughter, Michael’s older sister, something else I didn’t know about him. I’m trying to think of the things I do know about him.

Candice, or Candy as the family call her, was married two years ago, when she was twenty-two (twenty-two!). She’s as ginger as her mother and brother, but her wedding photos are quite different from her parents’, awfully posed with that misty Vaseline-on-lens effect. But worst of all is seeing Michael at fifteen-ish, gangly, even more spotty, with his shoulders hunched and that kind of sheen on his skin that just says ‘smelly boy who masturbates too much’. Only three years ago. I’ve been here before today, haven’t I?

Throughout all of this Michael just hangs around sheepishly in the corner, occasionally getting up to fetch biscuits or put on a CD of a Welsh choir as and when requested by his parents; a dutiful son.

Finally I see the chance to go and say, ‘Well, thanks for the tea, Fran, but I really must be going. Mum will go spare!’ She smiles at me, clearly thinking what a nice girl I am, and I feel a moment of guilt thinking about my real mum, who I haven’t visited for ages.

‘Michael, go and get Holly’s coat, will you?’ He must have left it upstairs because without a word he leaves the room and bounds up the first set of stairs two at a time, his rhythmic thuds gradually fading into the rafters.

Mr Parrott, who until this point has been merely nodding or laughing at the anecdotes provided by Fran, takes it upon himself to engage me in conversation.

‘So Holly, any ideas on which uni you’ll be going to?’ I like his voice, it’s deep and fatherly. I like fatherly men, I can’t help it, it’s all down to not having one around myself I guess.

‘Hull,’ I say quickly. It was the university that I went to, after all. Well, actually it was Humberside Polytechnic, but they’re all the same these days, aren’t they?

‘Hull? You seem very sure? When Candy was getting ready to go she couldn’t decide right up until the last moment.’ Oh well, I expect Candy had more than one choice.

‘Oh yes,’ I say, feeling vaguely like a time traveller with a sudden rare opportunity to look into my future and see every detail mapped out for me. ‘I’m definitely going to Hull.’

‘And after college? Something drama-y, I expect?’

I consider saying Customer Service Administration Manager (UK) for a hardware component manufacturer, but let’s face it, it wasn’t exactly my cherished dream when first I got on the train to Hull full of hope and looking forward to three years studying whatever ‘humanities’ might turn out to be. Somehow during those three years I was going to pick up the mythical abilities needed to be a journalist, I remember, without much of a clue of what it might entail. At some point immediately after graduation I expected to be discovered by someone and to start my career with a brief stint as a local reporter on
Humberside Today
or something before my star ascended to the
News at Ten
. I never imagined that hundreds of people with actual experience went for jobs reading the news on even
regional
radio stations even in the North, and I had a cat in hell’s chance of ever getting one. It still comes as something of a shock.

‘Journalism,’ I say. ‘That’s what I’d like to be involved in.’ I’m surprised to hear myself sound a little wistful as I remember.

‘Oh yes, journalism, very good. Nice little job on a good local gazette. Good steady trade. Well, good luck.’ He has a lovely smile, and Michael’s eyes. From his wedding photo I can tell that when he had hair he was dark and very good-looking. The non-sexual way in which he talks appeals to me, and in a funny kind of way I find it rather sexy. You never know, maybe if I was ten years older …? Just kidding, it’s that father fetish again. You always want what you don’t have.

Finally the jacket arrives and I say my goodbyes to Mr and Mrs Parrott.

Michael walks me outside and to the end of his driveway in silence. It’s dark now and I’m cold.

‘Which way is the bus-stop?’ I ask him, looking up and down the tree-lined avenue.

He points to my right. ‘Down the end of the avenue, turn right, across the road. It’s the 246.’

‘OK,’ I say briefly and peck him on the cheek.

He grabs my wrist. ‘You’re annoyed with me, aren’t you?’

‘No, no, I’m not,’ I say, obviously annoyed.

‘Look––’ He starts to explain but I cut him off.

‘This was just a bad idea, that’s all. I’ll see you.’ I stride off down the road to my left. Stop, turn around, and stride back past him in the direction of the bus-stop.

‘I had a really fantastic time!’ he calls after me, lamely.

I foolishly expect him to run after me but when I am two-thirds of the way towards the end of the road I conclude that he is not going to. Why do men never do that in real life?

This is the time that I should stop and really question what I thought I expected of this relationship. You know, why I got so jealous and pissed off with him. Especially considering that as far as I’m concerned I’m only meant to be taking a short excursion back to the good old days and it hardly seems fair of me to overreact. Maybe it’s like those situations when you meet someone pretty and probably on the rebound from his beautiful girlfriend who has gone travelling for a year without him. Someone who is obviously going to mess you around from the word go. Someone with whom you agree to have a casual-sex, no-commitments liaison, no problem at all, fine by you. And then what do you do? You promptly fall in love with him. It’s no wonder, then, that the poor sod gets a bit peeved when you ring him on the hour every hour, run out of restaurants after him or burst into tears at your own birthday party because he ended up snogging another girl, who happens to be your arch rival who you only invited so she could see how pretty your boyfriend was. Things like that can happen; I’ve heard of it.

What I’m saying is, you go into some things saying one thing out loud and thinking something entirely different deep inside. Serious denial, it’s pathetic.

But I’m not going to think about this now, I’ll think about it tomorrow.

Everything is changing. Since my return from Twickenham I’ve noticed it all around me. Not small imperceptible changes but big wheel-turning movements. For the first time in my life I have the impression that I am getting older, or no, maybe that’s too drastic. I can feel time passing.

After ten years of living with the back scent of washing-up and wet laundry, Rosie and I have developed a taste for household objects, more specifically kitchenware. Rosie kicked us off with a matching orange Bodum kettle and cafetière set, the perfect shade to complement our kitchen. Later that same day I brought home six retro fifties-style coffee mugs that I picked up on a lunchtime shopping trip that was supposed to be dedicated to the purchase of underwear. Black underwear, as white always goes grey in the wash.