My Legendary Girlfriend

CONTENTS

Mike Gayle

‘Full of belly-laughs and painfully acute observations’

‘If you like
Gregory’s Girl
 . . . then this novel has your name on it’

‘Hilarious debut’

‘Comic. . .fizzy. Here comes the male Bridget Jones’

‘Wonderfully contagious, humorous and astute’

‘Can’t help but win you over’

‘Gayle handles the tale impressively and in the almost-Biblically desolate Will, he has created a character who would cheer Holden Caulfield up’

‘Bridget Jones for the boys’

‘Fresh and Funny’

Ben Richards

Also by Mike Gayle

Mr Commitment

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank: for their help, Philippa Pride and all at Hodder, Jane Bradish Ellames and Emlyn Rees and all at Curtis Brown; for their encouragement, Joe and Evelyn Gayle, Andy Gayle, Phil Gayle, Jackie Behan, The Richards clan, Cath McDonnell, Charlotte and John, Liane Hentscher, Emma and Darren, Lisa Howe, John O’Reilly, Pip, Ben, Rodney Beckford, Nikki Bayley and the Four Winds regulars; and for their inspiration, Mr T, Dave Gedge, Kevin Smith, Mark Salzman, Xena, Richard Roundtree, Clive James, Oxfam and anyone who ever asked Mike.

For Claire

Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to reprint excerpts from the following copyrighted works:

It’s A Wonderful Life
® is a registered trademark of Republic Entertainment Inc.®, a subsidiary of Spelling Entertainment Group Inc.®

Quotation from WILD PALMS by William Faulkner reproduced by permission of Curtis Brown, London, on behalf of Random House, Inc.

The lines from
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
, a Paramount Pictures Release, are reproduced by permission of Paramount Pictures

The line from
Gregory’s Girl
is reproduced by permission of Bill Forsyth, c/o Peters Fraser Dunlop

The line from
Bugs Bunny
is reproduced by permission of Warner Bros.

Copyright © 1998 by Mike Gayle

First published in Great Britain in 1998
by Hodder and Stoughton
An Hacheette Livre UK Company

The right of Mike Gayle to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library

Epub ISBN 978 1 84894 157 1
Book ISBN 978 0 340 71816 2

Hodder & Stoughton Ltd
An Hacheette Livre UK Company
338 Euston Road
London NWl 3BH

Friday

6.05 P.M.

‘Mr Kelly, which football team do you support?’

As I strolled along the edge of the pitch clutching a football underneath each arm, I considered fourteen-year-old Martin Acker and his question carefully. He had been the last of my pupils to leave the pitch and I knew for a fact that he’d lingered with the specific intention of asking me his question, because amongst other things, not only was he genuinely inquisitive as to where my footballing allegiances lay, he also had no friends and had selected me as his companion on that long and lonely walk back to the changing rooms. He was quite literally covered head to foot in Wood Green Comprehensive School football pitch mud, which was a remarkable achievement for someone who hadn’t touched the ball all evening. Of his footballing prowess, there was little doubt in my mind that he was the worst player I’d ever witnessed. He knew it, and he knew that I knew it, and yet I didn’t have the heart to drop him from the team, because what he lacked in skill, he more than made up for in enthusiasm. This was of great encouragement to me, proving that for some, the futility of an occupation was not in itself a reason to give up.

While Martin was hopeless at playing soccer but excelled in its trivia, I, on the other hand, could neither play, teach nor fake an interest in this most tedious of distractions. Owing to PE staff shortages and the need to impress my superiors, the mob of fourteen-year-olds that made up the year eight B-team was entirely my responsibility. The headmaster, Mr Tucker, had been much impressed when I volunteered for the task, but the truth was less than altruistic: it was either football or the school drama club. The thought of spending two dinner-times per week, aiding and abetting the kids to butcher
My Fair Lady
, this term’s production, made football the less depressing option, but only marginally so. I was an English teacher – created to read books, drink cups of sugary tea and popularise sarcasm as a higher form of wit. I was not designed to run about in shorts on freezing cold autumnal evenings.

I peered down at Martin, just as he was looking up to see if I’d forgotten his question.

‘Manchester United,’ I lied.

‘Oh, sir, everyone supports Man U.’

‘They do?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Who do you support?’

‘Wimbledon, sir.’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t know, sir.’

And that was that. We continued our walk in silence, even failing to disturb the large number of urban seagulls gathered, wading and pecking in the mud, by the corner post. I had the feeling Martin wanted to engage me in more football talk but couldn’t think of anything else to ask.

Martin’s fellow team-mates were bellowing and screaming so loudly that I was alert to their mayhem before I even reached the changing room doors. Inside, chaos reigned – Kevin Rossiter was hanging upside down by his legs from a hot water pipe that spanned the room; Colin Christie was snapping his towel on James Lee’s bare buttocks; and Julie Whitcomb, oblivious to the events going on around her, was tucked in a corner of the changing room engrossed in
Wuthering Heights
, one of the set texts I was teaching my year-eight class this term.

‘Are you planning to get changed?’ I asked sardonically.

Julie withdrew her amply freckled nose from the novel, squinting as she raised her head to meet my gaze. The look of bewilderment on her face revealed that she had failed to understand the question.

‘These are changing rooms, Julie,’ I stated firmly, shaking my head in disbelief. ‘
Boys
’ changing rooms, to be exact. As you are neither a boy nor getting changed may I suggest that you leave?’

‘I would, Mr Kelly, but I can’t,’ she explained. ‘You see, I’m waiting for my boyfriend.’

I was intrigued. ‘Who’s your boyfriend?’

‘Clive O’Rourke, sir.’

I nodded my head. I hadn’t the faintest clue who Clive O’Rourke was.

‘Is he a year eight, Julie?’

‘No, sir, he’s in year eleven.’

‘Julie,’ I said, trying to break the bad news to her gently, ‘year elevens don’t have football practice today.’

‘Don’t they, sir? But Clive said to meet him here after football practice and not to move until he came to get me.’

She dropped her book into her rucksack and slowly picked up her jacket, as though her thought processes were draining her of power, like a computer trying to run too many programs at once.

‘How long have you been going out with Clive?’ I asked, casually.

She examined the worn soles of her scuffed Nike trainers intently before answering. ‘Since dinner-time, sir,’ she confessed quietly. ‘I asked him out while he was in the dinner queue buying pizza, beans and chips in the canteen.’

Hearing this tale of devotion which included remembering details of a beloved’s lunch was genuinely moving. My eyes flitted down to my watch. It was quarter past six. School had finished nearly three hours ago.

‘I’m afraid you’ve been the victim of a practical joke,’ I said, spelling it out, in case the penny hadn’t dropped. ‘Somehow I don’t think Clive’s going to turn up.’

She turned her head towards me briefly before examining her trainers once again. It was clear she was more heartbroken than embarrassed, her eyes squinting, desperately trying to hold back the tears and her lips pressed tightly together, attempting to lock in the sobs trying to escape. Eventually, she allowed herself the luxury of a carefully controlled sigh, rose and picked up her bag.

‘Are you going to be all right?’ I asked, even though it was obvious that she wasn’t.

With tears already forming in her eyes she said, ‘Yes, sir, I’ll be all right.’

I watched her all the way to the changing room doors by which time her grief was audible. Some teachers might have thought no more of her but not I. Her image remained in my head for some time because in the few brief moments we’d shared, I had realised that Julie Whitcomb was closer in kind to myself than anyone I’d ever met. She was one of us – one who interpreted every failure, whether small or large, as the out-working of Fate’s personal vendetta. Clive O’Rourke’s name would never be forgotten, it would be permanently etched on her brain just as my ex-girlfriend’s was on mine. And at some point in her future, mostly likely after completing her journey through the education system right up to degree level, she’d realise that a life pining after the Clive O’Rourkes of this world had made her bitter and twisted enough to join the teaching profession.

The sound of a small boy emitting a noise roughly approximating,
Whhhhhhhoooooooorrrrrraaaaaaahhhh!!!
signalled that Kevin Rossiter had changed adrenaline sports and was now racing around the far changing room, naked but for his underpants on his head. I couldn’t begin to fathom his motivation for such a stunt, let alone find the required energy to tell him off this close to the weekend and so, sighing heavily, I slipped unnoticed into the PE department’s tiny office, closing the door behind me.

Rooting around in my bag I discovered my fags, slightly crushed under the weight of my year eights’ exercise books – I had one left. I mentally totted up those that had fallen: five on the way to work, two in the staff room before registration, three during morning break, ten during lunch break. It was difficult to work out which was the more depressing thought: the fact that I – who had only in the last three years made the jump from social smoker to anti-social smoker – had managed to get through enough cigarettes to give an elephant lung cancer or that I hadn’t noticed until now.

As the nicotine took effect, I relaxed and decided that I was going to stay in my small but perfectly formed refuge, until the last of the Little People had disappeared. After half an hour, the shouting and screaming died down to a gentle hubbub and then blissful silence. Pulling the door ajar, and using my body to block the smoke in, I peered through the crack to make sure the coast was clear. It wasn’t. Martin Acker was still there. He was dressed from the top down but was having difficulty putting on his trousers, mainly because he already had his shoes on.

‘Acker!’